I thought I knew a thing or two about Christmas. For instance, the 6th January is Twelfth Night and therefore the 6th is the day by which Christmas decorations should be put away for another year if fateful ill luck is not to befall upon the household. It seems, however, that nothing is that simple. Having consulted the all-knowing Wikipedia, the Twelve Days of Christmas can start on Christmas Day or Boxing Day depending on what branch of Christianity you adhere to and whether you sleep on your side or your back. Therefore, if you count the apocryphal day of Jesus’s birth as Day 1, today (5th Jan) is actually the Twelfth Night and the Eve of Epiphany, the alleged occasion when the Three (or two or four) Kings (The Magi) followed their magic star to say “Hi” to the Son of God. (There is apparently no hard evidence that the Kings existed at all, never mind there being three. Still, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story…. we would be down at least one good carol without them). Anyway,….to be on the safe side, Tutt house is now totally de-decorated, the tinsel, baubles, artificial tree and lights all safely boxed and stacked in the attic. (Unfortunately it’s an understairs cupboard as we live in a garden flat, but it doubles up as an attic).
Further trawling through the previously mentioned online encyclopaedia reveals that in the other half of our County, i.e. West Sussex, there’s an ancient tradition of wassailing apple trees on Twelfth night to ensure a good harvest. As far as I recall, wassailing is a sort of mixture of Morris Dancing, singing madrigals and getting heartily pissed on mead….but I could be wrong. Across the border in parts of Kent, there’s a ritual that the last vestige of Christmas to be removed should be an edible decoration that can be shared with all the family. I haven’t told the children. Apparently England and France share a custom of baking a Twelfth Night cake with a bean and a pea in it. Whoever got the slices containing those would be King and Queen respectively for the night. I would be tempted to believe that except for the fact that I cannot accept that we share anything with the French, let alone an interesting, if harmless, tradition. Such is the importance of the occasion, that the Noble Bard even wrote a play specifically to be performed on “Twelfth Night”. Something went wrong in the planning though as the first performance took place at Middle Temple Hall in the City of London on 2nd February 1602. Poetic licence I guess.
Much more significantly for those involved in education, the three week respite is over, tomorrow heralds a return to the grindstone, the start of the Lent Term. (I wonder how much longer it will be called that, as this Country becomes ever more multi-denominational? Surely it’s offensive to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindis, and probably Eskimos for all I know and as we now know, offending anybody is rapidly becoming a capital offence, punishable by stoning, castration, neutering, decapitation or any other form of indignity that renders one helpless…..if not dead.) Mrs Tutt has spent the day doing almost nothing in preparation for the exhausting physical, mental, psychological and dietary challenges to come. There’s only one thing worse than being a teacher at this time and that’s being married to one.
Perhaps in a future missive I will go into why teachers really do need long holidays. Until then, I intend to enjoy Twelfth Night in the customary Sussex way and hope that I see neither stars nor Kings in the morning…..although a little gold wouldn’t go amiss.
2DtC
ADayInTheStrifeOf 