Twelfth Night (5th January) as a festival appears to come from Christianity, marking the Magi's visit to the infant Jesus. In some countries (then and now), gifts were given on Twelfth Night as a nod to the symbolic (and decidedly useless for a poor family with a new baby) offerings the Magi brought Jesus, but for the Victorians, the primary celebration of Twelfth Night came in the form of feasts and parties.
At the centre of the feast was the Twelfth Night cake. This could be purchased from a baker (who would have sold cakes for a wide range of budgets, from the simple to the elaborate; the most expensive being made in the shape of a ship or a castle and decorated with little Union Jack flags), or made in the home. To give an idea of the size of a Twelfth Night cake, an 1874 recipe for baking your own (taken from Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery) calls for 2lb each of butter, sugar and flour, 4lb currants, 1/2lb each of almonds and candied lemon and 20 - 20! - eggs. Spices such as nutmeg and ginger were required in 1/4oz quantities. That's one big cake.
In a twist that owes a great deal to the Tudor 'day of misrule' (which in turn drew from the Roman festival of Saturnalia, previously mentioned in this series), a dried bean and pea were baked into the Victorian Twelfth Night cake. A woman who found the bean was designated 'Queen' for the day; a man finding the pea the 'King'. Alternatively, it was possible to buy decks of Twelfth Night cards depicting an entire royal court of characters from monarchs to maids in waiting, and guests would draw a card each in order to designate their role in the evening's festivities.
The Victorians also took down their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night in the belief that leaving them up for longer would bring bad luck upon the household, a superstition that still persists to some extent today. Yet this 'rule' did not originally apply to Twelfth Night (5th January) - it was intended to refer to Candlemas (2nd February). Another example of the 'Chinese Whispers' quality of folklore...
Finally, a few words from Charles Dickens' daughter Mamie on Twelfth Night celebrations in her family, which also coincided with the celebration of her brother Charles Jr's birthday on the 6th:
My father was again in his element at the Twelfth Night parties...The cake was cut, and the favours and bonbons distributed at the birthday supper, and it was then that my father's kindly, genial nature overflowed in merriment. He would have something droll to say to everyone, and under his attentions the shyest child would brighten and become merry.
(Penned for the Ladies' Home Journal in 1892)
Enjoy the rest of your Xmas celebrations!
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