Notable facts:

• Interestingly, 7 Jan is when our Orthodox brothers and sisters celebrate Christmas Day due to their following of the Julian Calendar, which pre-dates our Gregorian Calendar (used throughout a majority of the Western world).

• In 567, the Council of Tours proclaimed the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany as a sacred and festive season, celebrating the birth of Jesus.

• During some parts of the Middle ages, openly practicing the Christianity was prohibited, and so the 12 days of Christmas was recited as a children’s poem as a form of catechesis to recall a deeper reality of the Christian faith (see adjacent figure).

• Twelfth Night, a play written by Shakespeare in 1602, is a performance first written for production toward the end of the Christmas Season, highly likely to be presented as a twelfth night entertainment during the period between Christmas and the Epiphany.