The Evening's Chosen "King" Drinks at a Twelfth Night Feast. c 1645, by Jacob Jordaens
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."
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.
