If you are not a native of Newfoundland and Labrador, but follow musical artists/bands from and/or musical venues on "The Rock", you might have recently seen the phrase "Old Christmas Day". Mainlanders may be unfamiliar with the term so to learn more about what/when Old Christmas Day is, why it's old, and how some celebrate it on "The Granite Planet", please read on.
Photo Credit: facebook.com/downhomelife
To put it succinctly, Old Christmas Day coincides with what is also called The Epiphany, the day in western Christian tradition when the Magi visited the Christ child and thus his manifestation to the Gentiles. This falls on January 6, and, coupled with Tibb's Eve on 23 December, it bookends the Christmas season in the province. It is called "old" due to a calendar change. From 46 BC, the Julian calendar was in use, but it calculated the solar year incorrectly. Off by 11 minutes annually, they added up over hundreds of years. By the time the error was caught and corrected in the 16th century, the calendar was off by a whole 10 days. The solution was the Gregorian calendar's creation. Named after Pope Gregory XIII, he decided that the fix would come by eliminating 10 days. October 5th would be followed by the 15th so the dates changed wherever the Pope still had influence, which excluded what is now know as the UK and its colonies.
By the mid 18th century, the UK began to follow suit and adopted the Gregorian calendar as well. By that time though, 11 days were missing. So, in 1752, the 2nd of September was followed by the 14th. This meant that Christmas came 11 days earlier, which was unpopular with some folks, so they opted to celebrate the "old" Christmas Day. In Newfoundland, the day traditionally marks the end of mummering. Because the 6th is also known as Twelfth Night, the last days of Christmas's 12 days, the number 12 is the number of sticky buns/rolls some people used to bake and give away door-to-door. Baking parties of 12 might also come together to bake and share a cake for some holiday social time. Some even consider it unlucky to leave your holiday lights up after the 6th.
So there you have it. More unique and interesting traditions from Canada's most unique and interesting province. If you have any Old Christmas Day traditions that you'd like to share, please let me know in the comments.
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