One Last Christmas

A Vespers Homily for Twelfth Night

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas, as this will likely be my last chance to do so until the end of 2017, when this newly budded year of ours will be ripe and ready to fall.

There are indeed Twelve Days of Christmas and for a very simple reason: in the first few centuries of our faith, the Church in the West celebrated the Nativity of Our Lord on December 25th, while the Church in the East did so on January 6th. In those early days, when there was as yet no Great Schism between the two halves of Christian tradition, the solution proved simple enough: celebrate both! Stretch the season out over 12 joyful days of praise and thanksgiving, leading up to Epiphany, the season of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

Tomorrow is Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas. There are no liturgies specific to it of which I am aware. It is not a holy day of obligation. But throughout the Middle Ages, Twelfth Night was much beloved as the time when the biggest and most raucous Christmas parties were held. There would be pageants and plays, jugglers and jesters, feasting and frolic. People would dress up in costume as any character from a broad array of Christian saints, biblical figures, and local folklore.

An old tradition, likely stemming from the winter Saturnalia of the Romans, was to invert the social order for the day. Servants would feast first. A youth would be elected boy bishop. And one lucky soul, selected by lot, would be crowned the Lord of Misrule. It was a grand old time! And the celebration would peak with the Boar’s Head, presented on a platter with great fanfare and singing. The boar represented the dangers of the wild forest, strong and fast with razor-sharp tusks. Its beheading recalled Christ’s defeat of sin, death, and the devil. The beast is dead and Jesus lives! Hallelujah!

So together with the Wise Men we follow the Star, bearing our gifts to the one who is our King and God and Sacrifice.

Twelfth Night was certainly not unknown in America. And few Americans appear to have kept it quite so well as George and Martha Washington, who were so famous for their Twelfth Night parties that some called it Washington’s Holiday. That he was the biggest whiskey distiller in the Colonies didn’t hurt, I’m sure.

Every year, we look forward to Christmas, the crowning joy of the season. Every year we smile to see the delight and excitement on our children’s faces when we trim the tree, when we hear the old familiar carols. It is a busy time, not only for the Church, but for all manner of businesses and families. We can grow weary of hectic holidays, of the frenzy and rush of it all, especially when the secular world around us seems bound and determined to start the season earlier every year. The stores are done with Christmas before we’ve so much as emptied our stockings.

I confess that I am ready to put the season to bed, even though our family celebrated perhaps our most wonderful Christmas ever. We’re ready for a breather, a calmer time betwixt the yuletide and Ash Wednesday. And we’re almost there. But I encourage you, brothers and sisters, to celebrate Christmas one last time. We needn’t be extravagant. Raise a glass. Sing a carol. Read a Christmas classic. Tomorrow is the twelfth and final night of Christmas, and we will miss it when it’s gone.

One more day of Christmas joy—not a forced celebration, but time enough to lift in praise a thankful, peaceful heart—that we might keep the Spirit of Christmas all the year through, and ever offer our hearts as fit habitation to receive our promised King.

Merry Christmas.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Boar’s Head Carol

The boar’s head in hand bear I,

Bedeck’d with bays and rosemary.

And I pray you, my masters, merry be,

Quot estis in convivio.

Caput apri defero

Reddens laudes Domino.

The boar’s head, as I understand,

Is the rarest dish in all this land,

Which thus bedeck’d with a gay garland

Let us servire cantico.

Caput apri defero

Reddens laudes Domino.

Our steward hath provided this

In honour of the King of Bliss;

Which on this day to be served is

In Reginensi atrio.

Caput apri defero

Reddens laudes Domino.