Twelve Days of Christmas Archives

Twelve Days of Christmas

‘On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me’…Fireworks followed by the dawn of New Year’s Day

January 01, 2024

It is New Year’s Day. Midnight has been marked with the usual eruption of noise. If there was silence in heaven for half an hour, there was limitless noise in the city for that same period. The sky filled with fireworks, the air with their smell, one’s ears with the thump of the explosions. In

‘On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me’…The martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket

December 28, 2023

On the Fifth Day of Christmas, the carol sends to us Five Gold Rings. It is also the day on which the Church remembers St Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his cathedral on 28 December in 1170. The archbishop’s supporters and friends, seeing the world in their robust medieval way, would have

‘On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me’…The truth, power and lesson of the Holy Innocents

December 27, 2023

Then Herod, seeing that he had been made fun of by the Magi, was very angry indeed. And he sent and destroyed all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in its boundaries of two years and under, in accordance with what he had exactly inquired about from the Magi. Then it was fulfilled,

‘On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me’…Good King Wenceslas, on the Feast of Stephen

December 25, 2023

Try teaching the words of Good King Wenceslas to a ten-year-old Ukrainian who’s still finding her way in English. I’d thought it would be easy, but clearly I hadn’t been concentrating in all the years I sang that song. I had the vague idea of a king in a fairytale castle setting off with his

‘On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me’…Robert Southwell’s ‘Burning Babe’

December 25, 2023

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shedAs though his

On the Ninth Day of Christmas: Twelfth Cake revisited

January 02, 2023

Would it be Christmas without a Dickensian flourish? Pen Volger introduces the predecessor of the traditional Christmas cake, which was a Twelfth Night treat but could last the year with proper storage and serious restraint. There’s plenty of time to have a go at the modern recipe she provides, and have your own ready in