{"id":93,"date":"2026-01-05T14:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T14:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whatuwill.com\/?p=93"},"modified":"2026-06-20T14:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T14:57:08","slug":"twelfth-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whatuwill.com\/?p=93","title":{"rendered":"Twelfth Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twelfth Night is the twelfth day of Christmas, aka January 5. It is the day before Epiphany. A fantastic way to bring Shakespeare into your Christmas celebrations is to have a Twelfth Night party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our children were younger, our family had a tradition of making an absolutely ridiculous Twelfth Night cake. We would make a simple cake from a box, but then give the kids free rein to decorate it as they wanted. When it was a 5 and 6 year old decorating, that could get pretty creative. I would provide them with icing, sprinkles, gum drops and whatever else I could find. Here is an example of what the result might be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We treat a Twelfth Night cake differently from an Epiphany cake. Epiphany (January 6) begins the season for king cake (those pretty little cakes with a plastic baby Jesus baked inside). We enjoy a good king cake as well, but that’s not what Twelfth Night is about. Twelfth Night (the eve of Epiphany–a holy day) is similar to Halloween (the eve of All Saints Day–also a holy day) in that it has a trick-playing, topsy-turvy aspect to it. Hence the reason Shakespeare’s play\u00a0Twelfth Night<\/em>\u00a0involves characters in disguise and a trick being played upon Malvolio. So, a Twelfth Night cake should be a little fun and have some disorder to it. Ours certainly embraced disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, this is a great time of year to embrace any of the historical Epiphany traditions. The documentary The Twelve Days of Tudor Christmas<\/em> identifies many of those traditions. The documentary is often more available on streaming services during the holidays, but here is the trailer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n