The season of Advent comes to a close this week, and now begins the 12 Days of Christmas.
So here’s how it works: There are 12 days between the festivals of Christmas, December 25, and Epiphany, January 6. We’ve just had the darkest moment of the year at Solstice. Now we celebrate he return of light, also known as as the sacred birth that takes place three days later, atmidnight between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Then the 12 holy days of the Christmastide begin. These days are observed as the journey, in miniature, of the whole cycle of the year~each of the 12 days corresponding to each of the 12 months, which in turn correspond to the Sun’s passage through each of the 12 starry regions of the zodiac.
In stories of the nativity, we learn that there were shepherds tending their flocks in the field when they heard a heavenly host announce the sacred birth. There were also three wise men of the East, following a star, which to them indicated the same sacred birth.
These two events~the annunciation to the shepherds, and the starry revelation to the kings~serve as bookends for the 12 Days of Christmas. This means that the journey from Christmas to Epiphany is like the journey of communion between the shepherds and the kings.
The shepherds represent the warmth of love in the human heart, while the kings represent the wisdom of intellect in the head.
The sublime mystery of Christmas, then, is that it allows the human being to unite the forces of thinking with the warmth of love and feeling, and to experience this through the cycle of 12 days, 12 months, and 12 starry regions of the zodiac.
Overhead skies will be clear and dark, with Moon waxing through crescent phase this week, meeting Venus in the west tonight, and encountering Mars one hour after sunset Christmas day.