Breakin’ Up Christmas: The Appalachian Epiphany

Hooray Jake, hooray John
Breakin’ up Christmas all night long
Santa Claus come, done and gone
Breaking up Christmas right straight along
Don’t you remem­ber a long time ago
The old folks danced the doesey-doe

~Bluegrass stan­dard Breaking Up Christmas, author unknown 

When I was in high school, I played the vio­lin (quite poor­ly, to be hon­est) in the GRC Orchestra. I was always break­ing my strings, and my moth­er would take me to her friend Homer Ledford to get them fixed up. I had no idea that Homer was a world-famous luthi­er, or mak­er and inven­tor of stringed instru­ments (sev­er­al of his instru­ments are even in the Smithsonian).

Anyway, Homer invit­ed us to a “Breaking Up” par­ty one year dur­ing Christmas break (I think it was at his house, but he was there regard­less). I assumed some­one had bro­ken up with their girl­friend, and the par­ty was to cheer them up. Everyone brought an instru­ment or a dish to share. There was mulled wine, a cozy blaze in the fire­place, and lots of blue­grass music.

Well, it took more than 30 years, but I final­ly learned what a “Breaking Up” par­ty is. And it starts with the his­to­ry of the Gregorian calendar. 

In the Christian cal­en­dar, January 6 is known as Epiphany, or the Twelfth Day of Christmas, mark­ing the vis­it of the Magi to the baby Jesus. In many Appalachian com­mu­ni­ties, this day is under­stood as the true birth­day of Jesus. As writ­ten in the 1917 book Old Christmas and Other Kentucky Tales in Verse, “Old Christmas occurs on the 6^th of January as it did in England before the change in the cal­en­dar in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, and as it still does in lands spir­i­tu­al­ly con­trolled by the Greek Church.”

You see, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII intro­duced the Gregorian cal­en­dar to cor­rect inac­cu­ra­cies in the Julian cal­en­dar, which had been used since Roman times. This reform shift­ed dates slight­ly, so that feasts and sea­sons aligned more close­ly with astro­nom­i­cal events like the win­ter solstice.

Not every­one adopt­ed the new cal­en­dar imme­di­ate­ly, because they didn’t have a way of learn­ing about it. Most rur­al and iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties main­tained old­er litur­gi­cal tra­di­tions that cel­e­brat­ed Christ’s birth accord­ing to the “Old Style” cal­en­dar, which placed it on January 6. In this sense, cel­e­brat­ing Jesus on January 6 was not a devi­a­tion, but a con­tin­u­a­tion of a cen­turies-old Christian practice.

For ear­ly Appalachian fam­i­lies, the date was less about exact cal­cu­la­tions and more about faith. The Twelve Days of Christmas became not just a sin­gle moment, but a whole sea­son. And a whole vibe. Houses were dec­o­rat­ed, fires kept burn­ing, and fam­i­lies gath­ered in fel­low­ship, extend­ing the joy of Christmastide beyond December 25.

Several gen­er­a­tions lat­er, many moun­tain com­mu­ni­ties still keep spir­its bright long after December 25 has passed. They call it Breakin’ Up Christmas, a rolling cel­e­bra­tion that stretch­es from Christmas Day through Twelfth Night. It isn’t about tak­ing a break from the hol­i­days but rather break­ing it into twelve small, shin­ing pieces. Twelve nights to gath­er, eat, dance, and play music. Twelve nights to car­ry folks through the hard­est part of winter. 

I’m pret­ty sure I attend­ed one of these fes­tive jams that year. Breaking Up Christmas is more than an Appalachian cus­tom. It is a tes­ta­ment to the endur­ing genius of moun­tain peo­ple, who have always known that the anti­dote to dark­ness is com­mu­ni­ty. It’s a reminder that joy is not tied to a sin­gle day on the cal­en­dar, but is, instead, a sea­son of pres­ence, con­nec­tion, and light in the darkness. 

The Appalachian Epiphany teach­es us that the deep­est cel­e­bra­tion comes not from sched­ules, not from presents, not from the cal­en­dar, but from being togeth­er, keep­ing faith, and car­ry­ing light into the long nights. In the hollers of the moun­tains, on the Twelfth Day, the spir­it of Christmas stretch­es on alive, radi­ant, and eternal.