The setting sun on January 5 brings Twelfth Night, the beginning of the end of the Yuletide festivities and our journey through the Twelve Days of Christmas. While nowadays it is rare to find a family that celebrates Twelfth Night, in years past, Twelfth Night celebrations in many places might rival those of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. By the Fifth of January, though, most of us these days are back to the workaday world, and back to some semblance of ordinary time. Even I, a longtime advocate for a return to Twelfth Night celebrations, have some trouble celebrating Twelfth Night unless it happens to fall on a weekend. The fact is that the contemporary world is tough on holidays like Twelfth Night, and tough on the Twelve Days of Christmas, in general. We rarely are afforded the time and space to celebrate them fully, and so many of them––Twelfth Night, especially––fall by the wayside.

I know some folks have wrapped up the Christmas season by now, especially now that New Year’s Day has passed. But in our family things continue through to Epiphany, or “Little Christmas,” as my mom sometimes calls it. And even beyond: In this house, we continue our Yuletide celebration all the way to Candlemas at the start of February. Perhaps this is what happens when you don’t even decorate your Christmas tree until Christmas Day (which is how things went this year), or perhaps this is what happens when you love Christmas as much as we do. We keep the spirit going for as long as we can.

If there are Carmelas in your life––and there may be even if you don’t realize it––today is their name day, their Onomastico, as we say in Italian, for July 16 brings the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It’s my mom’s name day today. She was named Carmela, after her grandmother, but we only hear her answer to that at the dentist’s office or doctor’s office. Usually she goes by Millie, and when I say you may not even realize you have a Carmela in your life, this is why: there are so many variants of the name. You might have a Millie, like I do, or you might have a Cammie or a Camille. My dad would sometimes call Mom “Mildred,” which was usually as a joke, but then (go figure) he actually put “Mildred” on his retirement plan papers at work.