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For many of us, the Christmas season ends today. New Year’s Eve parties will finish the year and we’ll anticipate the next one.

But in our country’s earlier years, when Colonies still belonged to England, Twelfth Night was celebrated. Twelfth Night refers to the 12 days from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6.

Years ago, some friends and I thought it would be fun to research Twelfth Night and, in so doing, come up with a different kind of holiday celebration.

Twelfth Night is a festival in the Episcopal denomination as well as others. It begins on Christmas Day and ends on Jan. 5, the eve of the last day of the 12 days of Christmas. The arrival of the Three Kings is portrayed at a Feast of Lights on the 12th night as part of the Christmas story that began with the birth of Jesus.

The idea of celebrating Twelfth Night belongs to the Romans, who anticipated their pagan holiday, the Saturnalia, at the end of winter. Beginning with one day, the raucous rioting and feasting — and even human sacrificing — stretched to a week. The participants’ reversal of roles was a highlight of Saturnalia, when noblemen dressed like slaves and slaves like noblemen, etc.

My friends and I chose a rather sedate celebration in contrast to the Romans. We decided that the British traditions, some borrowed from the Middle Ages and Shakespeare, would be appropriate in our neighborhoods. Dancing, King’s cake and wassail were the centerpieces of our parties for several years.

Jane Austen attended Twelfth Night parties. Robert Herrick wrote a lovely poem to be read at a Twelfth Night event. George Washington and Martha even married in Williamsburg, Va., on Twelfth Night.

Eden native Ed Wilson, English professor and retired provost of Wake Forest University, wrote the first poem for our parties.

Twelfth Night cake, or the King’s Cake, was always the centerpiece of our table decor. We didn’t try to compete with our British ancestors whose table of goodies took weeks to prepare and was viewed by guests as the symbol of the hostesses’ culinary talents.

Since King’s Cakes were made with yeast and assembled like the French brioche (8 pounds of flour, etc.), we decided that a pound cake with lots of flavoring would do as well. As the appointed cake baker, my task was to place a pea and a bean in the cake as tradition required.

The male guest who bit into the bean in a slice of cake is declared the “Lord of Misrule,” dons a paper crown and lords it over the rest of the guests. The woman who bites into the pea is proclaimed the queen and gets the first dance with the king. We pushed rugs back and danced to more modern music.

The pea and the bean did not perform well, as they cooked with the cake. The second cake was cooled before the pea and bean were added. Plastic dolls to represent Jesus were used in some cakes. I shied away from the dolls. If the above descriptions sound dull, just wait.

Wassail punch, made with spices, cider and ale, kept the spirits flowing. Whole apples were often added to the hot drink. In the colonies, apples played a large part in Twelfth Night festivities. Wassailing the apple tree was another favored tradition.

There were no apple trees in our yards, so a pine tree substituted as we drank a toast to the season and “wassailed” (threw the rest of the drink on the tree). It had snowed that night, so we gingerly stepped to the tree, holding our cups high.

The main course at our meals was chicken curry, served with five or six condiments such as gum drops, raisins, peanuts, coconut and pickle. The curry, served on rice, was an ample meal in itself.

Then the Twelfth Night cake, iced with seven-minute icing and colored candies, was ceremoniously presented. It didn’t look like a cake of Jane Austen’s period, which might have taken a week to make and another to decorate. They made intricate crowns to adorn their King’s Cake.

A firm tradition is that Christmas trees and wreaths must be down at the end of Twelfth Night — or they are doomed to stay up all year.

An Eden native, Rachel Wright is retired as a teacher at Morehead High School and an instructor at Rockingham Community College.