I've heard at least a half dozen different references to the twelve days of Christmas as leading up to Christmas Day, from advertisements to newscasters, all making the same mistake.
I'm not a Christian by most strict definitions (agnostics can't really make a claim to being anything, can we?), but at least I know that the twelve days of song begin with Christmas Day and end on Twelfth Night. It doesn't take a Shakespearean scholar to remember that.
The twelfth night was the night of the arrival of the three magi. It's also known in some circles as Epiphany (I like having a special breakfast on that day, out of sheer punliness). It's the day, back before the Victorian era, when English families exchanged the most treasured gifts (Christmas Day was reserved for services, with prayer and then feasting). It's the day they finally burned the yule log and observed the rest of the fun pagan rituals we now think of as part of Christmas celebrations -- you know, the parties, the dances, the drinking, the carousing, and the joyous, raucous riot.
I guess that economic issues must have forced folks to cram all their gift-giving into the first day, some time about a century and a half ago, but that doesn't mean the holiday shifted forward two weeks. Will somebody please tell the media?
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