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Twelfth Night and Hilarymas

By Jan-Öjvind Swahn
Information kindly provided by the Consulate General of Sweden, Vancouver

Twelfth Night or Feast of the Epiphany is not one of the symbol-laden days of the ecclesiastical year, and in quite a few churches it is no longer a holy day at all. Mostly it is an extra day off work, and local Christmas revues usually play to full houses on this particular day before closing down.

There are no longer any special traditions connected with Twelfth Night in Sweden, but some way into the 19th century this was the time when the "star-boys" appeared. A handful of schoolboys would dress up as the Three Wise Men and, together with King Herod and Judas with the collecting bag, would go from farm to farm, putting on a little drama about the Star of Bethlehem, the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt. Nowadays there are always one or two "star boys" - boys wearing white pointed hats of paper with gold stars glued onto them, in the Lucia procession, but only to redress the balance of the sexes.

In most other countries, Twelfth Night marks the absolute end of Christmas celebrations. But the Swedes and Finns, and people in some parts of Norway too, feel it is a pity to finish that early, and prefer to stretch Christmas another week into the New Year. That gives the terminal date of 13th January, which in Sweden is the name day of Knut, hence the popular expression tjugondedag Knut ("twentieth day Knut"). It is not exactly clear why the Swedes continue their Christmas celebrations for an extra week, but there is a lot to suggest that the notorious "Midwinter sacrifice" of the Viking ear, with its human sacrifices and great feasting, took place on 13th January, and so it is believed that the early Christian Church in the Nordic countries sought to exterminate the abomination by bringing the Midwinter sacrifice into the fold of Christmas. The stratagem incorporated another ecclesiastical principle for festive occasions, namely the celebration of a little "finishing-off festival", known as an octave, one week after the big one, and 13th January is undeniably the octave of Epiphany.

However this may be, it is on tjugondedag Knut that young Swedish families "plunder the Christmas tree". The children of friends and relative gather to strip the tree, which by now is shedding copious quantities of needles, and also to play games, eat cake and drink a fruit drink, throw out the Christmas tree and eventually walk home with a bag of sweets in one hand and in the other the treasures acquired from a lucky-dip "fishing pond" in one corner of the living room.

Advent • Lucia • Christmas • New Year

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