One way to practice the Twelve Days of Christmas

The Twelve Days of Christmas are largely forgotten today. If they are remembered, they’re remembered as a song about “Lord’s a leaping,” and “partridges in a pear tree.” The Twelve Days, December 25-January 5, are the true Christmas, the Christmas not of preparation for a single holiday, but of opening our hearts increasingly to the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Eternal Light of God. They’re also an invitation to an intensified spiritual awareness. We seek to open further to the Light come into the world in Emmanuel, God-With-Us. And so, the Twelve Days are a journey into prayer. It’s a season set at the beginning of the year that helps deepen our experience with God in the midst of daily life, embracing the sacred in the ordinary tasks of emails and grocery shopping, washing dishes, sitting in staff meetings, and running kids here and here.

This holiday season, why not soak in this mystery a little longer that most other people do? Why not practice the relevance of the Twelve Days for your interior life?

For help along that path, I’ve prepared a simple and short free ebook with readings for each of the Twelve Days and Christmas Eve. Most of them are short enough to be read in a minute, yet potent enough to provide you with meditative guidance throughout the day. To download, click on the title: The Journey of the Magi: The Twelve Days of Christmas as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Experience of Prayer.