Christmas Day is past.  All of my preparations, reflection, travel, hosting, worrying, church-hopping, family time, and a multitude of other things, focused on that one day out of the year, have met their deadline, ready or not.  Now what?

We are now in the “Twelve days of Christmas,”  the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany.  Usual notation seems to have Christmas as the first day, although I have seen cases where Epiphany is the twelfth day.

In the simplest sense, the Twelve Days of Christmas are just a part of the liturgical calendar — The days of Christmastide after Christmas and before we enter the season of Epiphany.

And yes, it has its own song (with a wild rendition on YouTube by the a capella group Straight No Chaser, although in my opinion a now removed version recorded about a decade ago was better done).  And Dave Walker has his vision of it over at CartoonChurch.com. 

I’m not suggesting that the materialistic chaos of the Christmas Day gift-giving and celebration be repeated another eleven days.  (Although there could be some wonderful ways of “sharing the Christmas season” with others that could happen during this time.)

But as a liturgical and devotional vehicle the days of Christmastide provide us a chance “clutch the baby Jesus” a few more days, as the preacher I heard the morning put it, and remind ourselves not to move on too quickly from this miraculous event where we celebrate God incarnate as a human being.  We need time for it to sink in that it is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

But this year the twelve days of Christmas seem more important to me than in the past.  It is probably the way in which the realities of this broken world have really intruded into my holiday season. 

Within my own family my father-in-law was hospitalized with pneumonia the second day after Christmas.  And while he is still in the hospital and making progress against this setback, this is only a piece in a larger set of health challenges that have permanently affected his lifestyle.

But it is also interesting how this year I am more aware of other peoples’ health challenges out there in the “Church Virtual,” the collection of brothers and sisters in Christ that I know mostly, if not entirely, in the on-line community.  I would especially lift up for prayer the Rev. David Wayne, AKA JollyBlogger, who was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas and spent Christmas Eve day in the OR.  While I only know David as a faithful medium-term reader of his blog, this is the power of the on-line world that we do become Christian Community with each other through this Web 2.0 stuff.  Praying for you David and rejoicing that you came home today.

And speaking of Web 2.0, I am becoming a fan of Facebook status updates as a way of building and maintaining Christian Community.  (Twitter is a similar vehicle.)  Through this conduit I was aware of various challenges and obstacles that my friends encountered through the holiday season, and it quickly filled up my prayer list.  Again, even 134 character updates are a tool in the development and maintenance of covenant community.

So, I pray that you also may not pass over Christmas too quickly but continue to find ways of  “hanging onto” the season in these twelve days.