Twelfth Night superstition

Have you removed all your Christmas decorations? Tradition has it that they should all be gone by Twelfth Night, but when exactly is that date? Most would believe that it’s today, 6th January, but the Church of England maintains that it was yesterday evening because that was the night before the Epiphany. However, in days gone by it was believed that the Christmas season began with the onset of dusk on the evening of 24th December; hence Twelfth Night fell on the 5th January. Tradition also maintains that anyone who leaves their decorations up past this date will suffer bad luck during the coming year – unless they leave the decorations up for the rest of the year!

Personally, I took mine down on the day after Boxing Day as I was so tired of seeing them, even though I don’t put them up until the first Christmas card arrives. This year the first one came around the 7th December, so you can imagine how sick of the sight of them I was, lol. In fact, if it hadn’t been for my grandchildren I wouldn’t bother with such ornaments at all, but if they don’t see any they worry about me. As it is I only hang them in my lounge, and I’m not a Christian in the accepted sense of the word anyway.

On the subject of bad luck: there has long been a tradition in my family that you should never do your laundry, or clean house, on either the 1st January, or on any Sunday. Apparently, if you do then you wash all the luck out of the year, or the week. I was also led to believe, amongst other things, that it brings bad luck to open an umbrella indoors, or to put shoes on a table. In my family we had a very old superstition that it was highly unlucky to eat a dish known as Jugged Hare – although few people would probably even remember that dish in the UK nowadays. Are these family traditions, or old folklore tales? I don’t know, and I don’t really care, but I’ve long been superstitious.