Twelfth Night

January 5 brings Twelfth Night, the end of the twelve days of Christmas, which means the twelve maids a-milking and the twelve lords a-leaping have to clear out of your living room.

Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" (which opens with the famous line "If music be the food of love, play on") may or may not have been written and performed as a post-Christmas entertainment for the court of Queen Elizabeth I. But pleasant to think it was.

And immediately following Twelfth Night is Epiphany, traditionally believed to celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men, or the Three Kings. Familiar to many is the T.S. Eliot poem--"A cold coming we had of it--just the worst time of the year"--and while it's good to read that again, two longer works worthy of attention are "The Four Wise Men" by Michel Tournier, a book full of surprises, beginning "I am black but I am a king," and "Journey of the Magi," by Paul William Roberts, his record of tracing the presumed path of the Magi, from Tehran to Bethlehem. It's often very funny, especially after Roberts finds himself tied to Reza, his profane Iranian driver.  A hot and dusty coming they had of it.