Today is the 12th and final day of Christmas, and by sunset tonight, the Christmas trees and decorations should go, if they haven’t gone already. According to one calculation, the 12 days coincide exactly with the Western Church’s festival of Christmas, which begins at sunset on Christmas Eve. In Britain and other countries, tonight is Twelfth Night, and tomorrow is the feast of Epiphany, which spotlights the visit of the magi to Bethlehem. Other countries, such as Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, start counting the 12 days of Christmas from 26 December, and so the 12th day is on 6 January.
Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall.
Robert Herrick
Today is the feast day of St Simeon the Stylite, a Syrian hermit from the 5th century who sought literally terrifying heights of holiness. Attempting to escape the company of others, he started living on a pillar, which at first was a metre high, but gradually rose to a towering 20 metres (60 feet). Its summit was just one metre square, allowing Simeon to stand or sit, but not lie down. From here, he preached sermons and offered one-to-one counsel to those willing to climb a ladder to speak with him. He lived on his pillar for over 30 years, which according to the author Edith Simon made him ‘the first to achieve solitary confinement in public’. He died in the year 459.
Waiting for Godot, the enigmatic play by Samuel Beckett, premiered today in 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris. The play attracted many different interpretations, to the initial frustration of Beckett, including religious ones due to the similarity of Godot to God, and biblical allusions in the dialogue. Waiting for Godot was especially well received by the inmates of San Quentin State Prison, California, who understood only too well its theme of eternally waiting while nothing happens.
In 1964, over 900 years after the great split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the leaders of those churches, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I, met and embraced each other on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. It was the first time the two leaders had met since the Council of Florence in 1438. They celebrated the moment by exchanging gifts and praying the Lord’s Prayer together in Greek and Latin.
‘I came here to say “good morning” to my beloved brother, the Pope. You must remember that it has been 525 years since we have spoken to one another!’ Patriarch Athenagoras I, speaking to reporters
It is the feast of St Syncletica of Alexandria, one of the desert mothers. After her parents died, she and her sister, who was blind, left Alexandria and went to live in an abandoned crypt. Amma Syncletica (amma is the female form of abba) became famous for her holiness and reluctantly accepted the women who wanted to be her disciples. It is thought that she died around the year 350 at the age of 80.
‘It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.’ Amma Syncletica