One of the sad byproducts of the endless “Holiday Season” that stretches from Halloween on (or, in recent years, even earlier – creating a weird Nightmare Before Christmas feeling in many stores), is that many people are thoroughly sick of Christmas by the time it arrives. The next day the tree goes out – or perhaps lingers a week until New Year’s Eve. But, by then, the desire to celebrate has really dimmed.
As a result, the Twelve Days of Christmas get very short shrift, indeed – and most galling of all is the complete rushing through of the Epiphany. Its Eve is the famed Twelfth Night of song and story, and it not only closes the Christmas season proper (although Yuletide still lingers as late as Candlemas), it also commemorates three beautiful mysteries in which Our Lord revealed Himself as God – hence the word “Epiphany”.
