Forget Dry January – if you’re going to celebrate Christmas, at least do it properly

Happy Christmas…what’s left of it. That’s right. It’s the Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, the one when my true love sent to me twelve drummers drumming, to go with the lords a leaping and ladies dancing, and the rest of the frankly inconvenient gifts for the Birth of Christ. Last night was Twelfth Night (we’re counting, remember, from the night of Christmas Eve); cue for festivities and party games chez McDonagh, and a Galette du Rois to celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings to baby Jesus, an event that looms large in more civilised Christian countries such as Spain. Yet there’s been next to no acknowledgement of this important feast in the cycle of the Christian year in Britain, even though Christmas does last twelve whole days, with its crescendo for Twelfth Night. This simple fact was formerly one of the great drivers of the dramatic and musical arts.