Happy Dancing Day!
Jan. 2nd, 2011 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessHappy Dancing Day!
One of my favorite books is a long time forgotten work by Jenny Overton called The Thirteen Days of Christmas, which details, merrily enough, what might have happened had some wealthy man in some English historical past decided to prove that he was truly the romantic sort by, well, giving the gifts of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." (The conceit of the book: his actions inspired the song.) I love the book because it is silly and fun and filled with irritated geese, hens, swans and far, far too much milk. But I also love it because not so incidentally the author takes care to describe some of the traditions of the other days of Christmas, those running merrily from Christmas to Epiphany.
As she notes, not all of these customs were celebrated everywhere and not always on the day she noted. And some she simply made up for the convenience of this particular tale. Including, I am fairly certain, Dancing Day – I know a couple of old Christmas carols reference a dancing day, or say "tomorrow will be my dancing day" and so on, but given that this day in the book just happens to appear, suspiciously and conveniently enough, on the ninth day when the nine ladies dancing show up, I sense a bit of authorial intervention and creativity here.
On the other hand, some churches still celebrate John the Evangelist's Day (December 27th) by blessing the Gospels; the BBC informs us that some people are still observing Holy Innocents Day in a very white and powdery manner, and so on. (Confusingly enough, Holy Innocents is put in the liturgical calendar before Epiphany; I always felt it should be the other way around.) And in the main, she is right: the truly old fashioned Christmases were once twelve (or thirteen) full days of celebration from Christmas to Epiphany. Of course, these days, in the U.S., at least, we seem to start with the Christmas holidaying on Thanksgiving and continue right up through New Year's, if we are counting holiday parties, decorations, food, pleas to shop more, and so on. (Overton fails to mention any tradition of people leaping from their houses to find shopping bargains on the 26th; she has a snowball fight for St. Stephen's Day instead.)
Each year, I keep meaning to blog the various days, based on the book, and each year, I either haven't had the book readily available or I've just forgotten. So, this is kinda like your quasi blog of the celebrations. Mostly, I just like the idea of extending winter celebrations just a little longer, to start the New Year off with not just one (or, on a weekend like this, two) recovery days from New Year's celebrations, but with a few more festivities to start the year on a brighter light. So, Happy Dancing Day to all! Even if the celebration is entirely made up. Those of you quite celebrated out (including the cats, who were distressed to realize that many of our neighbors had leftover fireworks that they merrily shot off last night) feel free to consume chocolate from the sidelines.
One of my favorite books is a long time forgotten work by Jenny Overton called The Thirteen Days of Christmas, which details, merrily enough, what might have happened had some wealthy man in some English historical past decided to prove that he was truly the romantic sort by, well, giving the gifts of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." (The conceit of the book: his actions inspired the song.) I love the book because it is silly and fun and filled with irritated geese, hens, swans and far, far too much milk. But I also love it because not so incidentally the author takes care to describe some of the traditions of the other days of Christmas, those running merrily from Christmas to Epiphany.
As she notes, not all of these customs were celebrated everywhere and not always on the day she noted. And some she simply made up for the convenience of this particular tale. Including, I am fairly certain, Dancing Day – I know a couple of old Christmas carols reference a dancing day, or say "tomorrow will be my dancing day" and so on, but given that this day in the book just happens to appear, suspiciously and conveniently enough, on the ninth day when the nine ladies dancing show up, I sense a bit of authorial intervention and creativity here.
On the other hand, some churches still celebrate John the Evangelist's Day (December 27th) by blessing the Gospels; the BBC informs us that some people are still observing Holy Innocents Day in a very white and powdery manner, and so on. (Confusingly enough, Holy Innocents is put in the liturgical calendar before Epiphany; I always felt it should be the other way around.) And in the main, she is right: the truly old fashioned Christmases were once twelve (or thirteen) full days of celebration from Christmas to Epiphany. Of course, these days, in the U.S., at least, we seem to start with the Christmas holidaying on Thanksgiving and continue right up through New Year's, if we are counting holiday parties, decorations, food, pleas to shop more, and so on. (Overton fails to mention any tradition of people leaping from their houses to find shopping bargains on the 26th; she has a snowball fight for St. Stephen's Day instead.)
Each year, I keep meaning to blog the various days, based on the book, and each year, I either haven't had the book readily available or I've just forgotten. So, this is kinda like your quasi blog of the celebrations. Mostly, I just like the idea of extending winter celebrations just a little longer, to start the New Year off with not just one (or, on a weekend like this, two) recovery days from New Year's celebrations, but with a few more festivities to start the year on a brighter light. So, Happy Dancing Day to all! Even if the celebration is entirely made up. Those of you quite celebrated out (including the cats, who were distressed to realize that many of our neighbors had leftover fireworks that they merrily shot off last night) feel free to consume chocolate from the sidelines.