12 Days of Xmas

We all know the song (and mangle the verses). But what exactly are the 12 days of Christmas?

Depending on the calendar you follow, they either began yesterday and conclude Jan. 5, or they begin today — which is Boxing Day and the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr — and conclude on Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany, when the Gospels say the Magi presented baby Jesus with their gifts, and thus he was manifested to the Gentiles.

I'm going with the latter interpretation, since I'm already a day behind (according to some). Alas, The Arts Muse has no partridge in a pear tree to offer (though I wouldn't mind shopping for a few lords a-leaping). Instead, I propose a dozen "gifts" — 12 things to do, read, see and contemplate as you enjoy the protracted Christmas feast. And these are (well, you're just going to have check out the blog every day to find out, aren't you?)

The first is a poem that is a kind of perverse Christmas tradition in my house. I read it aloud every year at this time from a graceful book called "Greece in Poetry" (Harry N. Abrams Inc.), because I am a closet classicist and because I've always believed that someone's sunrise is always someone else's sunset.

Herewith is John Milton's "Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity":

The Oracles are dumm,
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspire's the pale-ey'd priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring, and dale
Edg'd with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent,
With flowre-interwov'n tresses torn
The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.