The twelfth day before Christmas

I just realized I didn't identify yesterday's post, which was, of course, from Anne of Green Gables.  I can't imagine that anyone reading this blog wouldn't know it, but there it is, just in case.

For today: as I brought up before, Shakespeare mentions Christmas only a few times in his plays.  One of them is in Taming of the Shrew, in which Christopher Sly asks if a "comonty" is like a Christmas game.  The other two are in Love's Labors Lost; a "Christmas comedy" is mentioned again, and when the Duke and his friends are deciding to devote themselves to study, one of them says that "At Christmas I no more desire a rose/Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth"—he does all things in their season.

Of course, there is Twelfth Night, which has very little to do with Twelfth Night.

However, there is one other reference to Christmas that often slips by without notice, because the poet doesn't use the word.  Hamlet is a Christmas play.  The date of the play is unknown—most scholars place it between mid-1599 and July 1602 (when there is record of performance). It makes me wonder if Hamlet was a Christmas entertainment for 1600 or 1601.

This is Marcellus speaking in Act 1, scene 1, immediately after the ghost departs with the crowing of the rooster:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

Via flickr, from user shindigo