Did you know....

That the 12 Days of Christmas are NOT the 12 days before Christmas?

No, they are the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany, which occurs on January 6th of the Julian Calendar (now Gregorian).

That's right, Epiphany, the day set aside to celebrate the arrival of the Magi, was celebrated a long time before Christmas was even established. The use of the number 12 was very common, as was 40, 7, and 21. Lent is 40 days long for example, Ash Wednesday being the first.

There is reason to believe that the date of Epiphany was established to be a certain number of days before Ash Wednesday. How it got fix to the Julian Calendar is not known.

But it is clear that the establishment of Christmas to be 12 days before Epiphany was not done to cover up the celebration of Yule or Saturnalia, since both would occur around 3-4 days prior to Christmas, and Yule, being a Germanic celebration, would have been unknown to early Christians clustered around the Mediterranean. It's like claiming that Channukah was established to cover up Christmas, when clearly it existed long before any such claim would have any credence.