SOUL FOOD:Importance of the 12 days of Christmas

The new year is here. Not that it seems so much different from 2006 at this point.

For better or for worse, what year ever makes a thoroughly clean break from the year that came before it? “Out with the old and in with the new” may have an appealing ring, but it gives short shrift to continuity from which we weave life’s meaning.

For millions of Christians who observe the traditional 12-day season of Christmas, the vanishing secular year and the emerging new are bound together in it.

The 12 days of Christmas are best known in our time as the subject of a four-centuries-old, French Christmas song with now archaic and misunderstood lyrics. The song, despite its enigmatic verses (who knows, after all, what a collie bird is?), remains in our songbook vocabulary.

Whoever penned its words some 400 years ago, as well as those who sang them, would have known what few of us do now: The first of the 12 days of Christmas is Dec. 25 and the last is Jan. 5.

But today our Christmas trees are heaped at the curb, if not long since hauled away with the trash. Christmas is a done deal.

All the Christmas (or was it holiday?) spirit we began conjuring sometime in November has, like a spent Christmas candle, been snuffed out. A good month before the start of February, (St.) Valentine’s Day cards are already on store shelves.

Where Christmas trees still shimmer through windows, pine wreaths still grace doors and strings of lights still hang from the eaves of roofs, the residents within are simply assumed to be lagging behind.

Yet, they are not. For today is the 11th day of Christmas. Tomorrow will be the last.

For Christians who keep them, every one of the 12 days is a day to celebrate and to contemplate the wonder of which John wrote in his gospel: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Born as an infant named Jesus to a common young woman named Mary, God chose to come into the world — which he made — as one of us.

Among the 12 days fall other feasts. Among them is the feast of St. Stephen, an early convert to Christianity — a servant, or deacon, of the church and its first martyr. He is remembered for his forgiveness as recounted in the biblical story of his death.

According to The Acts of the Apostles, as young Stephen was stoned to death, he “kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’ ”

Centuries later, the compassion Stephen as a deacon had shown kindness to the poor and was emulated by St. Nicholas, the 4th-century Bishop of Myra and the 10th-century Bohemian King Wenceslas.

The kindness of both St. Stephen and the king has since been woven into Christmas tradition through the words of the carol “Good King Wenceslas.”

On Dec. 26, the Feast of Stephen, Christians recall the martyr’s compassion, his faith and his forgiveness as they pray that by God’s grace they may follow his example.

Here in the United States, we have largely replaced St. Nicholas with our modern-day Santa Claus. But elsewhere, the Bishop of Myra is still widely commemorated on Dec. 6, his feast day, for his piety and care for the poor.

A virtual St. Nicholas Center, run from Holland, Mich., by devotees Carol Meyers and Jim Rosenthal, aims to revive knowledge of St. Nicholas and the celebration of his feast day here. The center’s richly illustrated Website (www.stnicholascenter.org) offers a bounty of information.

Visitors will find a biography of the bishop and sense of the place and times in which he lived; lore about how his feast day is celebrated around the world and resources for the celebration of St. Nicholas Day, including music, crafts, stories, recipes, ready-to-print handouts and e-cards.

For Meyers and Rosenthal, the “selfless nature” of Nicholas embodies the true spirit of Christmas. He was, they write on the Website, “a person of faith whose love for God led to concern for the needy and vulnerable.”

They believe his example can help any of us “to focus beyond ourselves” and to find “more meaning in the often stressful and frantic holiday seasons.”

The 12 days of Christmas can be less hectic than the more secular season that precede them. The rush to find those perfect gifts has passed. The social bashes are for the most part over. Only the revelry of New Year’s Eve lingers on the departing year’s horizon.

Monday morning, as many a merry soul nursed a hangover while watching the Tournament of Roses parade before the Rose Bowl game, others made their way to church to commemorate the Circumcision of Jesus Christ, another feast that falls within the 12 days.

The feast marks the day, eight days after the birth of Jesus, when according to Mosaic Law he was circumcised and received his name. Through circumcision, male offspring entered the Jewish community of the chosen people of God.

The church came to regard circumcision as a prefigurement of water baptism, which in the New Testament book Colossians is called “the circumcision made without hands.” Through baptism, both male and female children, or adult converts, become members of the church.

The 12 days of Christmas come to an end when the church celebrates Epiphany — or in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Theophany — on Jan. 6.

On this day, the Western church tends to emphasize the three magi’s adoration of Jesus. As non-Jews, they are symbols for the manifestation of the divinity of Christ, not only to the Jews but also to those outside the Jewish community.

The Eastern Orthodox Church emphasizes the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, which revealed the Holy Trinity. This, as well as the adoration of the magi and Jesus’ first miracle of turning water to wine at a wedding in Cana, revealed Jesus to be the Son of God and the savior of the world.

This is the essence and culmination of Christmas for those who celebrate its 12 days. For apart from this, the birth of a son to an obscure Jewish maiden some 2,000 years ago holds no meaning or hope for the world at all.