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In 1835, Leigh Hunt published an account of Twelfth Nights past in his London Journal.
Christmas Goes out in Fine Style: "Christmas goes out in fine style,—with Twelfth Night. It is a finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the season; New Year’s Day the middle of it, or noon ; Twelfth Night is the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of twelfth cakes. The whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are kings & queens. Everybody is somebody else, & learns at once to laugh at, & to tolerate, characters different from his own, by enacting them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres, merry rooms, little holiday faces, & last not least, the painted sugar on the cakes, so bad to eat but so fine to look at, useful because it is perfectly useless except for a sight & a moral,—all conspire to throw a giddy splendor over the last night of the season, & to send it to bed in pomp & colors, like a Prince.
"Twelfth-cake & its king & queen are in honor of the crowned heads who are said to have brought presents to Jesus in his cradle—a piece of royal service not necessary to be believed in by good Christians, though very proper to be maintained among the gratuitous decorations with which good & poetical hearts willingly garnish their faith. “The Magi, or Wise Men, are vulgarly called the three kings of Collen (Cologne). The first, named Melchior, an aged man with a long beard, offered gold; the second, Jasper, a beardless youth, offered frankincense; the third, Balthaser, a black or moor, with a large spreading beard, offered myrrh.” This picture is full of color, & has often been painted. The word Epiphany (Eirifaitiat, ivperapparllio, an appearance from above), alludes to the star which is described in the Bible as guiding the Wise Men. In Italy, the word has been corrupted into Beffania, or Beffana, (as in England it used to be called Piffany) ; & Beffana, in some parts of that country, has come to mean an old fairy, or Mother Bunch, whose figure is carried about the streets, & who rewards or punishes children at night by pulting sweetmeats, or stones & dirt, into a stocking hung up for the purpose near the bed’s head. The word Beffa, taken from this, familiarly means a trick or mockery put upon anyone — to such base uses may come the most splendid terms. Twelfth Day, like the other old festivals of the church of old, has had a link of connection found for it with Pagan customs, & has been traced to the Saturnalia of the ancients, when people drew lots for imaginary kingdoms. Its observation is still kept up, with more or less ceremony, all over Christendom. In Paris, they enjoy it with their usual vivacity. The king there is chosen, not by drawing a paper as with us, but by the lot of a bean which falls to him, & which is put into the cake; & great ceremony is observed when the king or the queen ” drinks;” which once gave rise to a jest, that occasioned the damnation of a play of Voltaire’s. The play was performed at this season, & a queen in it having to die by poison, a wag exclaimed with Twelfth Night solemnity, when her Majesty was about to take it, “The queen drinks.” The joke was infectious; & the play died, as well as the poor queen.
"Many a pleasant Twelfth-Night have we passed in our time; & such future Twelfth-Nights as may remain to us shall be pleasant, God & good-will permitting; for even if care should be round about them, we have no notion of missing these mountaintops of rest & brightness, on which people may refresh themselves during the stormiest parts of life’s voyage.
"We spent a Twelfth Night once, which, by common consent of the parties concerned, was afterwards known by the name of The Twelfth Night. It was doubted among us, not merely whether ourselves, but whether anybody else, ever had such a Twelfth Night;
"The evening began with such tea as is worth mention, for we never knew anybody make it like the maker. Dr Johnson would have given it his placidest growl of approbation. Then, with piano-forte, violin, & violoncello, came Handel, Corelli, & Mozart. Then followed the drawing for king & queen, in order that the “small infantry” might have their due share of the night, without sitting up too too-late (for a reasonable “too-late” is to be allowed once & away). Then games, of all the received kinds, forgetting no branch of Christmas customs. And very good extempore blank verse was spoken by some of the court {for our characters imitated a court), not unworthy of the wit & dignity of Tom Thumb. Then, came supper, & all characters were soon forgotten but the feaster’s own; good & lively souls, & festive all, both male & female,—with a constellation of the brightest eyes that we bad ever seen met together…
"The bright eyes, the beauty, the good humor, the wine, the wit, the poetry (for we had celebrated wits & poet’s among us, as well as charming women), fused all hearts together in one unceasing round of fancy & laughter, till breakfast,—to which we adjourned in a room full of books, the authors of which might almost have been waked up & embodied, to come among us. Here, with the bright eyes literally as bright as ever at six o’clock in the morning (we all remarked it), we merged one glorious day into another, as a good omen (for its was also fine weather, though in January) ; & as luck & our good faith would have it, the door was no sooner opened_ to let forth the ever-joyous visitors, than the trumpets of a regiment quartered in the neighborhood struck up into the morning air, seeming to blow forth triumphant approbation, & as if they sounded purely to do us honor, & to say ” You are as early & untired as we.”
Twelfth Night (also known as Epiphany Eve) is a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night as either 5 January or 6 January, depending on whether the counting begins on Christmas Day or 26 December.
A superstition in some English-speaking countries suggests it is unlucky to leave Christmas decorations hanging after Twelfth Night. Other traditional customs in England include eating king cake, singing Christmas carols, chalking the door, having one's house blessed, merrymaking, & attending church services.
In 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed that the entire period between Christmas & Epiphany should be considered part of the celebration, creating what became known as the twelve days of Christmas, or what the English called Christmastide. On the last of the twelve days, called Twelfth Night, various cultures developed a wide range of additional special festivities.
The Church of England, Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, celebrates Twelfth Night on the 5th & "refers to the night before Epiphany, the day when the nativity story tells us that the wise men visited the infant Jesus."
Wassailing apple trees on the twelfth night to ensure a good harvest, a tradition in Maplehurst, West Sussex
In 567 A.D, the Council of Tours "proclaimed the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany as a sacred & festive season, & established the duty of Advent fasting in preparation for the feast." Christopher Hill, as well as William J. Federer, states that this was done to solve the "administrative problem for the Roman Empire as it tried to coordinate the solar Julian calendar with the lunar calendars of its provinces in the east."
In medieval & Tudor England, Candlemas traditionally marked the end of the Christmas season, although later, Twelfth Night came to signal the end of Christmastide, with a new but related season of Epiphanytide running until Candlemas. A popular Twelfth Night tradition was to have a bean & pea hidden inside a Twelfth-night cake; the "man who finds the bean in his slice of cake becomes King for the night while the lady who finds a pea in her slice of cake becomes Queen for the night."
Food & drink are the center of the British celebrations in modern times. All of the most traditional ones go back many centuries. The punch called wassail is consumed especially on Twelfth Night & throughout Christmas time, especially in the UK.
William Shakespeare wrote the play Twelfth Night, circa 1601. It is unknown whether Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, or What You Will was written to be performed as a Twelfth Night entertainment. The earliest known performance took place at Middle Temple Hall, one of the Inns of Court, on Candlemas night, 2 February 1602. The play has many elements that are reversed, in the tradition of Twelfth Night, such as a woman Viola dressing as a man, & a servant Malvolio imagining that he can become a nobleman.
In colonial America, a Christmas wreath was left up on the front door of each home. When taken down at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, any edible portions would be consumed with the other foods of a feast. The same held true in the 19th–20th centuries with fruits adorning Christmas trees.
