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Today, December 26th, is the First Day of the Twelve Days of Christmas. These days December 26th means Christmas is over to most people, but in the Middle Ages there was still almost two weeks of Christmas left!

Churches circulated donation boxes amongst the congregation during Advent, and those boxes and their contents were distributed amongst the poor on the First Day of Christmas, otherwise known as Boxing Day.

Several countries still celebrate Boxing Day - including Scotland, Ireland, Australia and Canada. In some Canadian provinces Boxing Day is a statutory holiday when all workers are given a mandatory day off with full pay. In the countries that still celebrate Boxing Day, it is much like the day after Thanksgiving in the United States - a huge shopping day. Which is really ironic given the historical bases for the holiday.

I would like to see a tradition start where instead of running out to hit the after Christmas sales, or running out to return and exchange gifts, Boxing Day made a real come back. This year I plan to take a good inventory of our home and donate items that we no longer need or use to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Why not have Boxing Day be the day that you give each member of your household a box and ask them to fill it with things to donate to charity? You could spend Boxing Day volunteering at a soup kitchen. Or donate some money to a charitable organization? It is easy to get wrapped up in the season, but this time of year should really be a time to realize how lucky we are to have warm families and warm homes, and to think of and do something for those who are not as fortunate.

Many countries and cultures have foods that serve as symbols. Wine and bread, for example, play key roles in many christian ceremonies. Beans are considered lucky on New Year's Day in the South, the Caribbean and parts of the Middle East. In ancient Rome grain symbolized good fortune and plenty. Many of these food based symbols come up during the Christmas season and have roots dating back to times when these short, cold days were spent inside with family looking forward to longer days and the spring to come.

The pretzel shape has a special significance - it is derived from a pagan calendar symbol to mark the winter solstice. The pagan marking consisted of a circle, which represented the sun's course and the dot in the center of the circle to represent the earth. When this shape is made from one piece of rolled dough, the dot in the center becomes a cross, thus making the pretzel shape we are all familiar with. Countries such as Denmark and Finland still have traditional pretzels to celebrate this time of year.

The yule log, or buche de noel is a jelly-roll cake that is frosted and decorated to look like a log - a yule log. This type of cake is popular in France (buche de noel), Italy (ceppo de natale), Lithuania (berzo saka - filled with prune jam, chocolate and walnuts), England (yule log - filed with apricot jam and almonds and covered with red currant jelly and almond paste icing) and Norway (julestamme - filled with strawberry or raspberry jam and covered with whipped cream or almond paste icing).

Shortbread, a classic Scottish treat, is a traditional Christmas and New Year's treat that descended from the oatmeal bannock that was served at pagan Yule celebrations. The bannock was a round cake with a circle in the center and ridges around the rim to symbolize the sun and its rays. It is considered unlucky to cut shortbread with a knife - it should be broken into pieces to avoid bad luck.

It would be really hard for me to pick one single song as my favorite Christmas carol - as I really do enjoy a lot of them. Obviously The Twelve Days of Christmas would top my list, but I also have a soft spot for some more obnoxious and less classic carols, like All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth sung by the Chipmunks and eleven-year-old Gayla Peevey's I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. 

Anyway, I think the 1940s through the 1960s has to be the golden age of Christmas carols. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the older carols too, but there is just something so festive about the songs written in and around the 1950s. Here are some of my favorites:

All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth 

Written in 1944 by Donal Yetter Gardner and first recorded in 1947. According to Wikipedia, Gardner, a children's music teacher, got the idea for the song when he noticed that most of his young students were missing at least one front tooth. He asked his students what they wanted for Christmas, and most replied with a whistle due to the missing teeth. It is rumored that he wrote the song in only thirty minutes!

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas 

This song was a hit in 1953, written by John Rox and sung by eleven year old Gayla Peevey on the Ed Sullivan Show. While her request for Christmas is a little less realistic than having adult teeth grow in, I still think its a fun song. I don't hear it as often as others on the radio, but when I do it always gets stuck in my head!

The song was a hit on the Billboard charts and reached number 24. It was so popular that rumors were created around the young singer and the song. Rumor had it that the song was released as a fundraiser to help Peevey's hometown zoo raise the funds the acquire a hippo. In 2007, however, the grown up singer clarified that a radio station from her home town (Oklahoma City) had used the popularity of the song to launch a campaign to present young Peevey with an actual hippopotamus on Christmas - and the campaign was successful! After her dream came true, Peevey donated her hippo (named Matilda) to the local zoo where the hippo lived a long life. You can see a video of the grown up Peevey singing at the Oklahoma City Zoo here.