The 9th Day of Christmas or is it the 8th? – January 2nd

By Grover cleveland – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37539711

But is it? Wikipedia says it is the 9th Day as the first is Christmas Day. But the Perpetual Almanac of Folklore by Charles Kightly counts from Boxing Day so for him it is the 8th Day and I have seen this in other older sources. For example: Gervase Markham’s ‘The English Husbandman of 1635 says:

‘What weather shall be on the sixth and twentieth day of December, the like weather will be all the month of January.’

This is the idea that the weather on each day of Christmas is linked to the weather in the corresponding month. So the weather for the first month of the year, will be determined by the weather on the first day of Christmas which for Markham is the 26th not the 25th.

But if it is the 9th Day we can therefore expect the weather in September 2024 to be unusually warm and wet. Otherwise a warm and wet August!

For more on which days are the 12 days of Christmas have a look at my 12th Night post:

I have republished my post of the Chinese New Year which you can see here:


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One Reply to “The 9th Day of Christmas or is it the 8th? – January 2nd”

  1. Ste Geneviève, thanks to her prayers, saved Paris from Attila. He didn’t even attack the city.
    She was born in Nanterre and died on January 3rd, 512, aged 89.
    There is a fountain in Nanterre, near the cathedral.

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