A lot of people seem to have the mistaken notion that the “12 days of Christmas” refers to the week and a half or so leading up to Christmas.  To be fair, I used to think the same thing.

Traditionally, however, according to the church calendar, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and continues for 12 days until January 6th, which is the feast day of the three kings, otherwise known–and I swear I am not making this up–as “Epiphany“.

I knew I wanted to do some kind of twelve-day event to celebrate not only the Christmas season but the Muppets’ longstanding tradition of creating Christmas content.  Originally, I wanted to look at and review 12 different Muppet Christmas productions, but I didn’t have time to do justice to them this year, so that will have to wait until next year.  Instead, I’m going to look at snippets of Muppet Christmas things and talk about them as appropriate.

I know that some people tend to get Christmassed out by the time Christmas actually gets here.  I empathize with that; last year my family had Christmas a week early, as my brother was here in town for a concert.  Subsequently, someone in the grocery store asked me if I was ready for Christmas, and I said something to the effect of: “For me, Christmas is already over.”

Nevertheless, there is an apropos song to apply to this situation that is from a Muppet production even though it doesn’t have any actual Muppets in it:

My intention is to keep Christmas with me, and share it with you, for at least a week and a half.