Twelve days of Christmas

If you follow the popular song The Twelve Days of Christmas, you cannot help but notice that Christmas day itself is not included among the twelve. So the proper name for the song should be The Twelve Days After Christmas. If you include Christmas day itself, the Epiphany becomes the 13th day. In England, the Epiphany is called The Twelfth Day. In fact Shakespeare‚s play Twelfth Night was written to be performed on the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany, a celebration that was a survival of the pagan Saturnalia of Roman times. In Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, the Epiphany is the Twelfth Day. All this is now academic because the Epiphany is now a movable feast commemorated on the first Sunday of January that does not fall on a New Year. So the Christmastide now varies from December 25th to the movable feast of the Epiphany.

There have been attempts to tie up the song Twelve Days of Christmas with The Bible. As we know, the song consists of an enumeration of gifts a lover supposedly sends his loved one. The partridge in a pear tree is no less than Jesus; the two turtle doves are interpreted as the old and new Testaments ; the three french hens are seen as symbols of faith, hope and love; four calling birds become the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; five golden rings represent the first five books of the old Testament; six geese a-laying are the six days of creation; seven swans a-swimming stand for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; eight maids a-milking, the eight beatitudes; nine ladies dancing, the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit; ten lords a-leaping, the Ten Commandments, the eleven pipers piping, the eleven faithful disciples and lastly, the twelve drummers drumming, the twelve points of belief in the Apostle's Creed. It is a very interesting numerological transition.

The reason why the Twelve Days of Christmas was never part of the Philippine Christmas is because Christmastide here began on December 16 with the pre-dawn novena Masses and ended on January 6, the Feast of the Three Kings. In short, our Christmas season here was 21 days! Now it can be as short as 17 days. It's still probably the longest Christmas celebration.

But what's important is not the length but the spirit of the celebration. Under our present economic predicament, what would be in keeping with the true Christmas spirit is what we do for our less fortunate brothers. Let us all in our own way share our Christmas with those who have less in life. Let's not forget the holy innocents of our times – the street children.