Today is the second day not of, but after Christmas

Today is the second day of what has popularly termed as the twelve days of Christmas.

Strictly speaking, it is the twelve days after Christmas that is being referred to. This was because there was a time when Christmastide officially ended on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. It is a day that commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi or Wise Men from the East.

Then on May 9, 1964, Pope Paul VI gave his approval for a complete reorganization of the liturgical calendar and it went into effect on January 1, 1970. Since then, the Epiphany became a movable feast observed on the first Sunday of January that does not fall on a Sunday. So it can fall anytime from January 2 to January 9. This year it will be celebrated on January 4 – so will have only eight days after Christmas. When January 1 falls on a Sunday, there will actually be thirteen days after Christmas.

The Nativity and the Epiphany are related events. We never understood how one could be celebrated in a fixed date and the other in a movable date. Now people don’t observe the Epiphany. They think they are just going to a regular Sunday Mass.

Tomorrow will be the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the children of Bethlehem,two years old and under, who were massacred by Herod. Among the Medes and Persians, the Magi were a priestly caste supposedly with great occult powers. The Three Kings were Magi. But another one told Herod that a new king had just been born. Herod feared that the new-born king would be his replacement; he ordered all new-born children to be killed.

There was time when it was believed that a great number of infants were killed. But modern researchers estimate their numbers to have been between six and twenty-five. Their findings are based on studies on just how large the population of Bethlehem was then.

The popular name for the Feast of the Holy Innocents is Childermass. There was a time when Childermass was celebrated by whipping children and even adults so "that the memory of Herod’s murder of the Innocents might stick closer." This practice has been immortalized in Boccaccio’s Decameron.

In Mexico, El Dia de los Inocentes is ce-lebrated very much the way Americans observe April Fool’s Day. One plays tricks on intimate friends. The idea is to fool people by borrowing or a personal object from them. This is replaced with something totally worthless and they are reminded that it is Niños Inocentes. This was done in the Philippines during the Spanish times. Today, the Feast of the Holy Innocents passes unnoticed.

The custom that is still very much with us is the nine-consecutive dawn masses called Misas de Aguinaldo that are finally concluded with the Midnight Mass on Christmas called Misa de Gallo. The basis for this custom is the ancient belief that a rooster was the first creature that announced the birth of Christ by crowing Christus natus est! The hymnal prayer sung in Latin in the liturgical ceremony that precedes Midnight Mass reverberates with the voice of the choir singing Christus natus est nobis (Christ is born to us).

That is the true meaning of Christmas.