The Twelve Days of Blogmas

We are officialy twelve days out from Christmas Day, unless you ask my husband. For him, this December 25th business is a fallacy: Christmas, or rather, Serbian Christmas, falls unpretentiously on January 7th. 

Whether you’re celebrating this month or next month, one thing remains disturbingly misunderstood and well-celebrated: this blasphemous “twelve days until Christmas” countdown. 

By now, I’m sure that a content creator somewhere is filming a well-intended series boasting twelve days of Christmas cocktails. Or perhaps Amazon is running twelve days of sales on electronics; maybe you saw a jewelry ad with some witty caption about five golden rings.

It seems that too many want to get in on the “fun” that is this maddening, syrupy-sweet song. (I’ve never even seen a pear tree, so eleven pipers piping is a pipe dream.)

I find humor in this every year, because technically, Christmas Day is actually the first day of the twelve days of Christmas.

That means that the twelfth day would be January 6th, often considered Little Christmas for many Christian Americans. This day commemorates the three wise men’s visits to Bethlehem (what’s so little about that?) and the official end of Christmas.

(Although for Serbians, January 6th marks Badnje veče or Christmas Eve, so the wise men don’t arrive until Janury 18th. Again, why is it called Little Christmas with such a mighty task?)

With all this said, you might be surprised to hear that my usual, ineffable woe for this misconstrued holiday countdown has softened this year. I’m thinking it would be great fun to take part in this miscalculated phenomena — my chance to rewrite the narrative. Or more honestly, a chance for me to throw myself back into the spur of writing blogs. 

I’ve taken a step away from my blog because I’ve been teaching college students how to write essays and poems and fiction and non-fiction. That’s been rewarding and exciting in it’s own way, but I’ve been sitting on a lot of blog material. Other than my occasional journaling, my writing has fallen on the back-burner. And the more I helped young writers find their voice on the page, the more I felt sad to be so far removed from my own. 

With most of the semester behind me and a rather large pile of final essays to grade ahead of me, coming back to the blog feels a bit more accessible. But to make certain of this — and really challenge myself — I’m attempting to write twelve blogs for the next twelve days. I can’t promise they’ll all be good, but they’ll be there, and that’s what counts. My “Christmas gift” to you, dear readers, and to myself. Consider this our blasphemous first day of Blogmas.

Yours cumulatively,

That American Girl