The Official End Of The 12 Days...!

I guess we can officially call the holidays over and done now.

The end of the "12 Days of Christmas",known as the Epiphany, was yesterday...and that makes today "Distaff Day". For those of you that don't know what that is (like me) I have a brief explanation for ya!

Distaff Day

The day after Epiphany (January 6) was traditionally the one on which women went back to work after the 12-day Christmas celebration. A distaff is the wooden rod (staff) that holds the flax or wool on a spinning wheel. The term distaff came to refer to both women’s work and the female branch (distaff side) of the family. The women’s husbands did not go back to work until the following Monday (see below), so they would mischievously try to set fire to the flax on their wives’ distaffs, while the women, lying in wait, would douse them with buckets of water.

The English poet Robert Herrick wrote:

If the maids a-spinning goe
Burn their flax and fire their tow.
Bring the pails of water then
Let the maids bewash the men.

I'm not exactly sure just why the women had to go back to work, while the men got off until the next Monday. Guess that's one of those many mysteries I never found the answer to.

Seems to be a lot of those around.

Let's get some fresh coffee and sit in the kitchen as it's still too chilly to go on the patio and sit!