Kmflett's Blog

Their Christmas Holidays and Ours: Does Christmas still have twelve days?

January 5th is Twelfth Night, in the traditional calendar a festival to rival that of Christmas Day, and January 6th Epiphany. These dates mark the end of the modern Christmas holiday period.

How far people in work in 2025/26 observe a 12-day holiday or take time off depends on occupation, employer practices and individual circumstances. It may be that some official statistics are collected on the matter- although I’m not aware of them.

Whether time off is extended or otherwise over the Twelve Days has been the subject of employer and class led change.

For example Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that in 1797 the Customs and Excise Office in London closed for six days between December 21st (St Thomas’s Day) and 6th January (Epiphany). By 1838 it opened on every day except 25th December. Hutton notes that between 1790 and 1840 ‘employers, led by the Government, carried out a ruthless pruning of the Christmas holidays..’ The 1833 Factory Act had decreed that, Sundays aside, the only days when a worker should not attend work were Christmas Day and Good Friday. The 1871 Bank Holiday Act added a few Mondays into the equation as well as St Stephens Day (Boxing Day)

However from the early 1840s, led by Charles Dickens, efforts to reclaim and promote Christmas as a popular festival of harmony and social peace, certainly for the middle classes were well underway. Hutton notes that in 1847 the Poor Law Commission allowed a Christmas dinner in all Workhouses. The modern Christmas was under development.

The point being that time taken off work at Christmas (or not) although dictated to an extent by the 12 days of the traditional calendar has also been about the promotion or denial of people to take time off work.

The modern retail Christmas, as shopworkers union USDAW underlines each year, seems to consist of Christmas Day (if you are lucky).

Others may take time from 24th December to 2nd January, 8 or 9 days but not 12.

However long you do or do not take in 2026 things are guaranteed to be better ordered and regulated if you are in a trade union.