Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas

As you may know the season of Christmas lasts for 12 days. It goes from 25 December to the 5 January. I personally leave my Christmas tree up until the 5th January.

No doubt we have the song The Twelve Days of Christmas because of the season being 12 days long. When we were in England when our daughter was 5 she sang The Twelve Days of Christmas on the train when we were travelling from London to Ware. Her aunt and friends with us were impressed though some fellow passengers did not look so happy.

As it was my daughters first year of Christmas away from home I sent her 12 small gifts to unwrap each day for the 12 days of Christmas. I inlcuded a little note to explain why I’d done this and reminded her of singing on the train in England. This was on top of the larger present we also gave her. Each gift had a little note with it that said “On the _____ day of Christmas my parents gave to me ______________.” So I’ve left posting about this until now so that she didn’t see what the gifts we’re going to be.

Here’s what I included for each of the 12 gifts:

• 1 doggy notebook
• 2 Christmas decorations
• 3 pairs of ear rings
• 4 strips of blu tac
• 5 cookie cutters rings
• 6 socks (3 pairs)
• 7 die-set
• 8 produce bags
• 9 metres of elastic
• 10 make-up pads
• 11 chocolates
• 12 hole silicon ice/chocolate mold

Some other ideas included:

• make-up pack
• hair ties
• other food
• other sewing stuff
• 5 napkin rings
• 5 candles for Advent
• 12 empty chocolate wrappers
• 12 paper cranes (I found some that she’d left here)

Other Ideas for Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas

I’ve seen a few ideas such as:

• Secretly leaving gifts each day outside someones front door
• having dessert each night to remember how sweet it is that Jesus came

And a few ideas from The Season of the Nativity

In The Season of the Nativity Sybil MacBeth explores more fully celebrating Advent, Christmas & Epiphany. Some of the ideas she gives for celebrating the twelve days of Christmas include:

• Say “Merry Christmas” to everyone you meet for the 12 days
• Brainstorm the gifts that Jesus brings to the world
• On Christmas day draw a name of someone else in the household and each of the 12 days do something nice for the person.
• Plan something intentional to do as a family everyday during Christmas.
• Call/message or write a note to a different friend or relative each of the 12 days.
• Leave sending your Christmas cards until during the 12 days of Christmas

For the full explanation of these and other ideas see The Season of the Nativity.

Have you done anything to celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas?

And so tomorrow the season of Epiphany starts. So I’d better go and take down my Christmas decorations.