Traditions
Parties & Tricks
People used to have parties on Twelfth Night and it was traditional to play practical jokes. These included tricks such as hiding live birds in empty pie case, so that they flew away when your startled guests cut open the crusts (as in the nursery rhyme "Sing A Song of Sixpence")
Twelfth Night Cake
The Twelfth Night cake was a rich and dense fruitcake which traditionally contained a bean. If you got the bean then you were King of Queen of the Bean and everyone had to do what you told them to do.
Twelfth Night Plays
Twelfth Night itself was a traditional day for plays or 'mummings' and it is thought that Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" took it's name from the fact that it was first performed as part of Twelfth Night celebrations.
 Yule Log
The Yule log, lit on Christmas day, remained burning until Twelfth Night in order to bring good fortune to the house for the coming year. It's charred remains were kept, both to kindle the next year's Yule log, as well as to protect the house from fire and lightning.
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When is Twelfth Night?
Twelfth Night is the evening of the 5th January.
Why is Twelfth Night on the 5th January and not the 6th (Twelfth Day)?
It is only with our modern understanding of astronomy and time keeping that we start a new day in the middle of the night. To our ancient ancestors, the end of the day was when the sun went down. The oncoming night was the beginning of the next day. Nights were actually part of the holiday i.e. the next day. Therefore Christmas started at sunset on December 24th. They considered this to be Christmas Evening (or Christmas Eve). Christmas Day would then continue until nightfall on the 25th which started St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day), the first of the twelve days of Christmas.
To our ancient ancestors, the Twelfth night after Christmas would have been the evening starting January 6th, Epiphany, the twelfth and final day of the Christmas season.
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Why is it bad luck to leave decorations up after Twelfth Night?
 Long ago it was thought that leaving the decorations up would cause a disaster. People believed that tree-spirits lived in the greenery (holy, ivy etc) they decorated their houses with. The greenery was brought into the house to provide a safe haven for tree-spirits during the harsh midwinter days. Once this period was over it was necessary to return the greenery back outside to release the tree-spirits into the countryside once again. Failure to do this would mean that vegetation would not be able to start growing again, and the tree-spirits would stay in the house causing mischief.
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