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Happy 2020! (Instrumental Guitar music credit: Chris Richter)
Today’s the very last day of the year. If you’re familiar with the Christmas song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, according to the original tradition, today would be the seventh day of Christmas. Many, including retailers have taken this 12 day tradition and used it as a countdown before the beloved holiday. Many have used it as a challenge to find 12 people or families to secretly leave gifts for on the doorstep. Every year, including this one, my husband and I have found gifts on our doorstep from givers who identify themselves and from givers who don’t. Thank you all. We appreciate your thoughtfulnes!
My mom, Nora Trujillo Chatwin, would be 91 years old a few days from now. She grew up in the 1930’s in the northern New Mexican town of Taos, where most of the residents were Catholic. Her family, even though they were not Catholic, observed with everyone else El Dia de los Reyes, on January 6th.. In English, it’s called Three Kings Day, or Epiphany. They celebrated with each child leaving an empty shoe with a note inside, under their bed or on the porch on the eve of January 5th ( the twelfth day of Christmas) to be filled with gifts from the three wise men who gave gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Baby Jesus, centuries ago. Typical gifts that my mom and her siblings received were fruit and nuts.
I also grew up in Taos but by the 1960’s and 70’s, my brothers and sisters and I hung hand sewn stockings on our fireplace mantle on Christmas Eve, for Santa to place goodies inside. Most of the homes during my mom’s childhood were heated with a cast iron wood burning stove, which I think heats a room much better than a fireplace does. But you wouldn’t hang a stocking from a wood burning stove for obvious reasons, but an empty shoe under the bed worked well. Early Christmas morning we’d find an orange in the toe, and nuts and hard ribbon candy filling the rest of the stocking. If we were lucky, our Santa would put chocolate bon bons with cream centers inside too, instead of eating them all himself. Our Santa Claus was a chocoholic, so on some years, I’ll bet Mrs. Claus rode in the sleigh with him and protected the bon bons from the Jolly Elf.
Back to Twelfth Night and the twelve days of Christmas….one common tradition is to place the statues of the three kings in the nativity set, representing the visit to the Christ child. Another fun tradition elsewhere in the world is to bake a pea and a bean inside a cake. When the cake is served, the man who finds the bean in his slice becomes king for the night, and the woman who finds the pea becomes a queen for the night, no matter their social position.
Shakespeare wrote the play, Twelfth Night to be performed as a Twelfth Night entertainment. The first known performance took place in 1602, on the Christian Holy Day of Candlemas, February 2nd, which celebrates the presentation of the infant Jesus at the Temple.