St. Distaffs Day is January 7, the day after the
Epiphany, a church
festival celebrated in commemoration of the visit of the
Wise Men of
the East to Bethlehem. As this marked the end of the
Christmas
Festival, work with the distaff was commenced, hence the name,
St.
Distaffs Day.
It is also called "Roc Day" in Scotland, rock being
another name for
distaff. "Roc-ing Day" was a feasting day when friends and
neighbors
met together in the early days of the New Year to celebrate the end
of
the Christmastide Festival.
ST. DISTAFF’S DAYAs the first free day after the twelve
by which Christmas was formerly celebrated, the 7th of January was a
notable one among our ancestors. They jocularly called it St. Distaff’s Dag, or
Rock Dag, because by women the rock or distaff was then resumed, or proposed to
be so. The duty seems to have been considered a dubious one, and when it was
complied with, the ploughmen, who on their part scarcely felt called upon on
this day to resume work, made it their sport to set the flax a-burning; in
requital of which prank, the maids soused the men from the water-pails.
Herrick gives its the popular ritual of the day in some of his
cheerful stanzas:
St. Distaff’s Day; Or, the Morrow after Twelfth-day
Partly work and partly play
You must on St. Distaffs Day:
From the
plough soon free your team;
Then cane home and fother them:
If the maids
a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring in pails of water
then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff’ all the
right:
Then bid Christmas sport good night,
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.’