"Solar (deity) origins of the Twelve Days of Christmas and Christianity"
 
     Source of text     The number twelve has a strange significance in the reckoning of time:   There are twelve solar months, corresponding roughly to twelve  zodiacal houses along the sun’s ecliptic path. In the Christian myth,  Christ is followed by 12 apostles.   There are traditionally twelve ‘hours’ of daylight, as reckoned by  sun-dials, and hence we derive our twenty four hours of daylight and  night which comprise our unit of one solar ‘day’. This is known as  ‘apparent solar time’, as compared to the clock-time we tend to keep in  modern times, known as ‘mean solar time’.   There is a difference of roughly twelve days between the old ‘Julian’  and newer ‘Gregorian’ calendric systems in use in Europe and Asia  Minor. These changes were instituted to prevent the celebration of  Easter ( calculated based on the Jewish Lunar calendar ) from creeping  further away from the Spring Equinox into summer.   There are twelve days marking the traditional Eur...
 
