Fun Nature-y Ways to Celebrate 12th Night with Kids
5 ways to celebrate the 12th Night with kids!! Pin for later! Click the pictures below for more info.
An After Holiday Tree for our Animal Friends
I always feel a little down in early January after all of the excitement of teh December holidays. One thing that I have always kind of dreaded is taking the tree down. Over the last few years as we have started to celebrate the Twelfth Night however, it's become its own little celebration, which has completely changed how I feel about this time. It's become something to look forward to, rather than something to be sad about. In fact I have begun to enjoy taking the ornaments down and packing them away- when we put them up there are frantic little hands grabbing for them and bickering about who gets to hang the most. When I take them down I can reminisce about each of them. We make a family…
Wassailing the Trees and 2 types of Toasts
For years we have wassailed our fruit trees on the Twelfth Night to ensure a bountiful fruit harvest, because who doesn't want a bountiful fruit harvest, right? My kids were little and I never really went into too much depth though... until this year when I went down a rabbit hole and became obsessed with wassail toast. More on that later. For years we stuck a cinnamon stick in a cup of apple juice and sang songs about wassailing or fruit and it was a good time. Actually only my 7 year old ever remembers the words to "Here we come a Wassailing" so he's generally in charge lol. They also sometimes make up songs about specific fruit trees in our yard. It's fun and you should try it! As…
The Twelfth Night
I am never quite set on what to call this holiday– January 6th. Its Epiphany, Twelfth Night, Three Kings Day, Befana. Most of them are Christian in origin having something to do with the three wise men arriving at the manger with gifts. In fact, in 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed that the entire period between Christmas and Epiphany should be considered the twelve days of Christmas replacing an ancient celebration that the church deemed “too rowdy.” Modern scholars have suggested that it was instead to solve "administrative problems for the Roman Empire as it tried to coordinate the solar Julian calendar with the lunar calendars of its provinces in the east." And in fact, those ancient celebrations all revolved around that same discrepancy between the lunar and solar…
Dried Orange Garland Tea
It is traditional at Twelfth Night celebration to eat any edible holiday decorations- you can imagine that long ago when citrus (and food in general) was more rare that eating these expensive items was just common sense in addition to bringing a close to the holiday season. This is also the date many feel that holiday decoration in general should come down. For us, that often means that I let the kids try to eat their fossilized gingerbread houses (which I think is gross, but they love) but this year I wanted to do something a little more interesting. When I made my citrus garland tutorial I was very intentional in including that after use as decorations, the slices could be made into tea. I decided that using dried orange…
Focaccia della Befana
January 6th is Befana in Italy, also known as Epiphany, Twelfth Night or Three Kings day in various cultures. Befana is a winter witch who brings treats for children and sweeps away the old year. I kind of love that throughout christianization Italians have stubbornly held on to their winter witch. Like most holidays Befana/ Epiphany predates the current Christian celebration and marks the end of the liminal time between Christmas and New Years. I like having that end marked in some way, this always feels like such a weird time of year for me. Focaccia della Belfana Despite being called focaccia, this is an enriched bread with milk eggs and butter. It’s a little sweet, but not overly so. I use a gluten free brioche recipe, but you can…