Twelfth Night Celebrations Every January Including Music and Misrule

This Thursday, January 5, is Twelfth Night, the official end of the 12 Days of Christmas. For Shakespeare’s lifetime, celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas was a huge occasion, and one which included merriment right up until the very last day. In Shakespeare’s plays, we see many of the Twelfth Night customs come to play including the complete upheaval of established social order where we have boys dressed in mock religious processions, lots of alcoholic drinking alongside elaborate meals, as well as bouts of parody and general misrule against moral order.And of course, for Shakespeare, all of these moments of wild abandon are accompanied by song and dance. To help us understand what Twelfth Night was and why it was celebrated with such crazy antics is our guest and author of a new book on Twelfth Night customs, Rachel Aanstad

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