(M253) It has been proposed to explain the manifold superstitions which cluster round the Twelve Days, or rather the Twelve Nights, as they are more popularly called,(747) by reference to the place which they occupy in the Christian calendar, beginning as they do immediately after Christmas and ending with Epiphany.(748) But, in the first place, it is difficult to see why the interval between these two particular festivals should have attracted to itself a greater mass of superstitious belief and custom than the interval between any other two Christian festivals in the calendar; if it really did so, the ground of its special attraction is still to seek, and on this essential point the advocates of the Christian origin of the Twelve Nights throw no light. In the second place, the superstitious beliefs and customs themselves appear to have no relation to Christianity but to be purely pagan in character. Lastly, a fatal objection to the theory in question is that the place of the Twelve Days in the calendar is not uniformly fixed to the interval between Christmas and Epiphany; it varies considerably in popular opinion in different places, but it is significant that the variations never exceed certain comparatively narrow limits. The twelve-days’ festival, so to speak, oscillates to and fro about a fixed point, which is either the end of the year or the winter solstice. Thus in Silesia the Twelve Days are usually reckoned to fall before Christmas instead of after it; though in the Polish districts and the mountainous region of the country the ordinary German opinion prevails that the days immediately follow Christmas.(749) In some parts of Bavaria the Twelve Days are counted from St. Thomas’s Day (the twenty-first of December) to New Year’s Day; while in parts of Mecklenburg they begin with New Year’s Day and so coincide with the first twelve days of January,(750) and this last mode of reckoning finds favour, as we saw, with some Celts of Brittany and Scotland.(751) These variations in the dating of the Twelve Days seem irreconcilable with the theory that they derive their superstitious character purely from the accident that they fall between Christmas and Epiphany; accordingly we may safely dismiss the theory of their Christian origin and recognize, with many good authorities,(752) in the Twelve Days the relics of a purely pagan festival, which was probably celebrated long before the foundation of Christianity. In truth the hypothesis of the Christian derivation of the Twelve Days in all probability exactly inverts the historical order of the facts. On the whole the evidence goes to shew that the great Christian festivals were arbitrarily timed by the church so as to coincide with previously existing pagan festivals for the sake of weaning the heathen from their old faith and bringing them over to the new religion. To make the transition as easy as possible the ecclesiastical authorities, in abolishing the ancient