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Since I didn’t know this, I’m assuming others might not as well: Christmastide, or the Christmas season, in the traditional Church Calendar lasts a full 40 days, not the mere “twelve days of Christmas” that I had thought. Thanks to my sister, Catarina Drexel, for pointing this out to me!
In the words of the Abbé Guéranger, O.S.B., from The Liturgical Year:
We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity of our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms
a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which she received the good tidings from the Angels on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing for four thousand years . . .
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St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
The Alma Redemptoris Mater is traditionally used to end compline for the whole of this season.
Observing the forty days of Christmas helps to give greater shape to the liturgical year–no need to anticipate in Advent and the flow from Christmas to Lent is smoother–a few weeks (or even a single day) of transition rather than a miniature “ordinary time.”
I discovered the “40 days” of Christmas a couple of years ago and have kept up my Xmas decorations until after the feast of the Purification. Hopeing in my small way to show that Xmas is only the beginning of a celebration and not the end of a hectic and terminal illness.