On the First Day of Christmas ...

We're all familiar with the first line of a well-known Christmas song: On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree ...

But just exactly when is the first day of Christmas?

Nowadays many people in the United States think of the "twelve days of Christmas" as starting on December 13th and culminating in Christmas Day itself. According to this system, it's all over and done with by December 26th. Historically, however, the Christmas season (at least in the West) has been celebrated starting on December 24th/25th and continuing until Epiphany on January 6th. That would make December 25th the "first day of Christmas" and the evening of January 5th the twelfth.

Nowadays it's common to put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving -- if we even wait that long! Christmas advertising begins long before that, and Christmas carols start ringing and jingling some time in November. Then we're all sick of it by December 26th, when some people actually take down their Christmas decorations. What's been lost in the shuffle is the concept of the two related yet distinct seasons at this time of year: Advent (the time of preparation and anticipation leading up to Christmas) and Christmas itself (from December 24th until Epiphany or a little beyond that).

Have you ever seen one of those Christmas countdown calendars, where there are little numbered "windows" in the picture and you open one each day until Christmas? They are also (and more properly, in my opinion) known as Advent calendars, and were originally intended to mark the days until the beginning -- not the end -- of the Christmas season.

Advent began today. It always starts on the Sunday closest to November 30th and goes for about four weeks. On the evening of December 24th -- Christmas Eve -- the actual Christmas season begins. So while part of me will join the society around me in enjoying a raucous secular Christmastime during the first three weeks or so of December, another part of me will also be celebrating Advent in a more quiet, reflective way -- and starting a whole other round of Christmas revelry near the end of the month.