On the Forgotten Art of Pausing and the Twelve Holy Nights Between the Years
"The heart must be ready at every call of life / To take leave and begin anew, / To bravely and without sorrow / To surrender itself to other, new bonds." (Hermann Hesse, Stages)
As you read these lines, we find ourselves in the midst of that enigmatic time which our ancestors called by a name that seems almost forgotten today: the Twelve Days of Christmas. For centuries, the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany on January 6th were considered a time outside of time—a liminal realm in which the familiar rules of everyday life lost their validity and the veil between the worlds thinned. In an era characterized by restless activity, the tyranny of the calendar, and ubiquitous availability, the idea of such a respite seems almost subversive. And yet: Perhaps therein lies its relevance.
But what exactly are the Twelve Days of Christmas? The etymological origin of the word, like so much about this custom, is disputed and ambiguous. One widespread interpretation derives it from the Middle High German word *rûch*, meaning "hairy" or "furry"—a reference to the demons and spirits clad in furs who were said to roam these nights. Even today, we know these beings as Perchten, wild figures of the Alpine region who roam the winter landscape in elaborate costumes, driving away evil spirits with the ringing of bells and noise. Another interpretation traces the word back to fumigation, the ancient practice of cleansing house and farm of evil spirits with incense or local herbs—a custom that has survived to this day in many rural regions.
The Time Outside of Time
The deeper origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas lies in an astronomical phenomenon that was very much on the minds of people in ancient times: the difference between the lunar and solar years. The lunar year, with its twelve lunar cycles, comprises only 354 days, while the solar year has 365. The difference of eleven days and twelve nights was understood by the Germanic and Celtic peoples as "days outside of time"—a kind of cosmic no-man's-land where the usual laws of nature lost their validity. This idea has survived to this day in the phrase "between the years," which we use without being aware of its original meaning. It is significant that this particular phrase has survived: it points to a collective unease, to the feeling of not quite belonging anywhere during these days.
The Twelve Days of Christmas traditionally extend from December 25th to January 6th, with each of the twelve nights being assigned to a month of the coming year. The dreams of these nights were considered prophetic, the weather an omen for the corresponding month – a farmers' rule known in some regions as pauren practick. Four nights were particularly significant: St. Thomas' Night at the winter solstice on December 21, the longest night of the year; Christmas Eve on December 24, when divine light entered the world; New Year's Eve as the culmination of the transition; and finally, the night before Epiphany, when the gates to the Otherworld closed again. According to folk belief, on these nights the gates to the afterlife opened especially wide.
Among the best-known figures of the Twelve Days of Christmas is the "Wild Hunt" – a ghostly procession of restless souls and spirits that roared across the land during the long winter nights. In some regions, the god Wotan led this hunt, in others Frau Percht or Frau Holle, that mythical figure whom Jacob Grimm interpreted as an echo of an ancient mother goddess. People locked their doors, refrained from hanging laundry (lest a spirit become entangled in it and remain as a sign of death at the house), and avoided speaking loudly or working. Spinning and sewing were strictly forbidden—anyone who disobeyed risked being swept away by the Wild Hunt or at least bringing misfortune upon their home.
In 567, the Council of Tours recognized the twelve nights as the "Most Holy Season"—a Dodecahemeron, as the Church Fathers called it. With this, the Church attempted to clothe pre-Christian customs in Christian garb, to tame and elevate them. But beneath the Christian surface, the older beliefs persisted: the fear of spirits, the reverence for the cosmic powers, which were particularly palpable during these nights.
Literary Interpretation
The Twelve Days of Christmas have left surprisingly few traces in German-language high literature—and yet there are remarkable exceptions that deserve to be rescued from oblivion. Perhaps the most significant is Richard Billinger's drama "Rauhnacht" from 1931, which was awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize the following year, a prize Billinger shared with Else Lasker-Schüler. Billinger, born in 1890 as the son of a farmer in the Innviertel region of Upper Austria and later a Jesuit student, uniquely combined the archaic customs of his homeland with the depths of the human soul in his work. His drama is set in a small village where remnants of pagan customs have survived alongside Christian traditions. The Twelve Days of Christmas become a metaphor for the eruption of suppressed drives and passions, for the conflict between civilization and nature, between the foreign and the familiar.
Billinger, born in 1890 as the son of a farmer in the Innviertel region of Upper Austria and later a Jesuit student, uniquely combined the archaic customs of his homeland with the abysses of the human soul. The play premiered on October 10, 1931, at the Munich Kammerspiele, directed by Otto Falckenberg, with sets and masks by the renowned illustrator Alfred Kubin, himself a master of the uncanny. Käthe Gold and Ewald Balser played the leading roles. Klaus Mann, who attended the premiere, noted laconically in his diary: "A hysterical peasant play with a lust murder—hardly bearable." However, other contemporaries viewed the work more favorably. Erich Kästner praised the Berlin production as "impressive" and highlighted the "unusually suggestive" portrayal of Tyrolean peasantry. The prominent director Jürgen Fehling brought the play to Berlin, where Werner Krauß portrayed the protagonist, Simon Kreuzhalter.
Hermann Hesse, in turn, praised Billinger's poetry in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung at the end of 1929 as "blissful"—astonishing praise from a poet who himself mastered the art of subtle nuance like few others. Carl Zuckmayer, with whom Billinger had been friends since 1926, wrote after his death: "I fear it will be difficult to perform or read him again today—although his poems are and will remain more beautiful than most of those written today." It is a melancholic judgment on a poet whose work is largely forgotten today.
A key passage in Billinger's drama reveals the true secret of the Twelve Days of Christmas. To the question, "What should I fear?" a character answers: "Not the outside, but the inside." In this inward turn lies the deeper meaning of these twelve nights: They are a time of reflection, of encountering oneself, of pausing—and thus also a time of confronting one's own shadows. The demons that wreak havoc during the Twelve Days of Christmas are not only the furry figures of the Perchtenlauf (a traditional Austrian winter festival); they are also the unresolved issues of the past year, the suppressed emotions, the repressed truths.
Even in recent times, literature has not forgotten the Twelve Days of Christmas. In 2018, the Swiss writer Urs Faes published an atmospherically rich story entitled "Raunächte" (Twelve Days of Christmas), in which a man returns to his Black Forest homeland after years abroad. He walks through deep snow along the old paths, recalls the bitter inheritance dispute over his father's farm, and listens for the call of the "Dark Ones," those ghostly figures who wreak havoc in the "no-man's-land between Christmas and Epiphany." Critics praised the book's "quiet tones" and "subtle, atmospherically dense descriptions of nature" – qualities that identify Faes as a worthy successor to that literary tradition which understands how to uncover the numinous in the everyday.
The Inside: An Archaeology of Silence
What can we learn from the Twelve Days of Christmas today, in a world of constant connectivity and algorithmically optimized attention? The answer may lie precisely in their apparent anachronism. The Twelve Days of Christmas were an institutionalized pause, a culturally legitimized respite from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. In a time when the agricultural year was characterized by hard work, these twelve nights offered a space for reflection, for dreams, for encountering the numinous. It was not leisure time in the modern sense, not a vacation, but a time of gathering and preparation for the coming year.
The ancient rules of the Twelve Days of Christmas—no washing clothes, no spinning, no noisy work—appear from today's perspective like a guide to digital detox avant la lettre. It was about interrupting the familiar rhythm, bringing the endless busyness to a standstill, and creating a space for the unexpected. The idea that the boundaries between worlds become permeable during this time can also be interpreted psychologically: When we silence the noise of everyday life, we can hear voices that are otherwise drowned out—voices of memory, intuition, longing, but also of regret and unfulfilled hopes.
The Twelve Days of Christmas also remind us of the importance of humility. In a time when we believe we can control and optimize everything, they remind us of those dimensions of existence that defy calculation. The "Wild Hunt" of spirits may be superstition—and yet each of us knows those restless thoughts and unfinished business that haunt us, especially in quiet moments. The Twelve Days of Christmas gave these inner storms a place and a time; they integrated the threatening into the rhythm of the year instead of suppressing it. Perhaps therein lies their healing power: that they give the darkness its space.
Between Superstition and Wisdom
It would be naive to romanticize the Twelve Days of Christmas. The idea of a "Wild Hunt" also served to keep people in check and to reinforce the order of the community. And yet, these traditions contain a wisdom that we should not dismiss too hastily: the knowledge of the necessity of transitions, of liminal times, of ritually marking the turn of the year—those rites of passage that the ethnologist Arnold van Gennep described as a universal structure of human culture.
In our secular society, the turn of the year has become an occasion for fireworks and party noise—a carnivalesque interruption of everyday life that is already forgotten the next morning. The Twelve Days of Christmas, on the other hand, extended over almost two weeks, thus offering ample space for the inner work that every new beginning requires. “Every beginning holds a magic within it,” wrote Hermann Hesse – but this magic only unfolds when we give it time and space, when we honor the old before turning to the new.
Perhaps the relevance of the Twelve Days of Christmas lies precisely in their slowness. In an accelerated world that forces us to constantly react and optimize, they offer a model of a different kind of temporality: a time of waiting, of listening, of conscious passivity. The cleansing of rooms with incense, traditionally part of the Twelve Days of Christmas, can be understood as a symbolic act: it is about dispelling old burdens and making room for the new – not through hectic activity, but through mindful ritual. The smoke rises and carries away what is no longer needed.
The Twelve Days of Christmas remind us that life is not just about productivity and efficiency. They invite us not to fear the darkness, but to understand it as a space of transformation. And they teach us that sometimes the most important things happen when we stop doing and begin to be. Hidden within the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany lies an ancient wisdom that has lost none of its validity in our time: that in order to move forward, we must sometimes pause—and that darkness, rightly considered, is not the absence of light, but the womb from which all light is born.
"And in every beginning dwells a magic spell, / That protects us and helps us to live." (Hermann Hesse)
Sapere aude!
S.
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