Day 1 - The Twelve Days of Christmas

The first thing that we sometimes get wrong at Christmas is the concept of the 12 Days of Christmas.

When I was younger, I seem to recall people using the concept of the 12 days of Christmas as a countdown to Christmas. This seemed to progress to the 25 days of Christmas, as a countdown to Christmas day.

The 12 days of Christmas actually refer to Christmas Day and the 11 days after Christmas, leading up to the Epiphany (January 6). Here’s part of the Wikipedia article about it:

“The Twelve Days of Christmas are the festive days beginning Christmas Day (25 December). This period is also known as Christmastide and Twelvetide. The Twelfth Night of Christmas is always on the evening of 5 January, but the Twelfth Day can either precede or follow the Twelfth Night according to which Christian tradition is followed. Twelfth Night is followed by the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January. In some traditions, the first day of Epiphany (6 January) and the twelfth day of Christmas overlap.”