Upon reading the title of this post, you might have thought of the Christmas carol, "Twelve Days of Christmas". That carol is a strange one for a few reasons, but one thing that confuses most who hear it is the whole idea that Christmas is 12 days. In secular society, Christmas is certainly celebrated on December 24th and 25th, and in the broader sense from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day (or even beginning on Halloween!) But to us Christians who celebrate Christmas as Christmas, and particularly the Christians who have liturgical calendars, we know that Christmas begins on Christmas Eve and extends for some time afterward. Given that knowledge, the 12th day of Christmas would be January 5th.
As a Catholic Christian, the end date of the Christmas season varies. The Christmas season ends at the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is always the third Sunday after Christmas Day. That means any date between January 9 and January 15. That's also after the 12th day of Christmas, so the Catholic reckoning doesn't quite match.
There was an older Catholic end date to Christmas, and a fixed one at that. The date I speak of is Candlemas, February 2. In that same liturgical calendar, however, there were the "pre-Lent" Sundays or weeks marking 70, 60, and 50 days before Easter, which have Latin names I'm not going to try to remember how to spell. Those days often overlapped with the days leading up to Candlemas, so really the Christmas season would last until it was 70 days before Easter. However, if you look at a pre-Vatican II calendar, another important detail appears: the fixed date of January 6th for the Feast of the Epiphany.
In the new Catholic liturgical calendar, the Feast of the Epiphany is the second Sunday after Christmas Day. However, the old liturgical calendar always had January 6th as the Feast of the Epiphany. Orthodox Christians also have the Feast of the Epiphany fixed as January 6th. Therefore, on January 6th, you might have an epiphany (pun intended) that the 12 days of Christmas are now over, and this Feast of the Epiphany begins the next season of the liturgical year. As a matter of fact, the Sundays after Epiphany are labelled as such on the old liturgical calendar, rather than Sundays after Christmas.
I hope that now you can see how we got the 12 days of Christmas. It takes a traditional Catholic Christian, Orthodox Christian, or anyone else who knows much about the history of Christian feasts to understand! Whether you celebrate Christmas until January 6th, February 2nd, or some date in between, I wish you a merry one.
