twelve days of christmas
Andii Bowsher wrote this about Christmas Cards in my blog-comments last year:
A few years ago we decided to recognise Christmas as the 12 day feast
it’s supposed to be and stopped worrying whether the cards arrived
before Dec 25, the aim being to get them to arrive sometime during the
12 days. We told everyone in an enclosed note what we were doing and
that it was part of de-stressing Christmas and told them they were
welcome to do likewise.
It’s a nice idea. I might do likewise, although I suppose you could argue that all you do is move the stress date back a few days. But I totally like the idea of spreading the feast – something my family has done for years – we meet different bits of the family on successive days, having scaled down feasts and presents at each house, which makes for a more manageable excitement level for the kids and a consequently manageable stress level for the parents.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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Of course the idea wasn’t simply to move the card sending a few days back, -useful though that could be to some people. It was, as you pick up about the whole thing, to spread the feast over several days. Or rather, re-spread the feast and get it out of the all-or-nothing frenzy of one day.