How to Celebrate Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night on Jan. 5 marks the official end of the holiday season. Throughout the world it's a time for light-hearted fun, rowdy games and dressing up in outrageous costumes - all customs descended from the Saturnalia celebrations of ancient Rome.

Things You'll Need

• Costumes
• Holiday Cookbooks
• Beans Or Trinkets
• Party Decorations
• Ale
• Apples
• Cakes
• Hard Cider
• Sugars

Instructions

1. Throw a Twelfth Night costume party. Decree that your guests dress either as ancient Roman celebrators, as characters from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night or in any costumes that suit their (or your) fancy.

2. Serve lamb's wool, the traditional Twelfth Night drink in England and Ireland, made of cider or ale, sugar, spices and roasted apples. (You'll find the recipe in traditional cookbooks of the British Isles and in many Christmas cookbooks.)

3. Pour a little lamb's wool or cider on your apple trees if you have any; it's customary to bless them that way on Twelfth Night.

4. Serve a Twelfth Night cake, sometimes called a king's cake. The recipe and the accompanying game vary slightly from country to country, but everywhere the crucial ingredient is the same: a bean or a trinket baked inside the cake.

5. Find the piece with the token inside, and become king or queen of the party. Choose a consort, and together you'll reign over the festivities as absolute monarchs who direct your "subjects" to perform ludicrous tasks or behave in ways comically contrary to their usual natures.

Tips & Warnings

• To bake your own Twelfth Night cake, look for a recipe in an ethnic holiday cookbook of choice: the British, French, Italians and Portugese all have yummy ones. If you lack the time or the inclination for baking, buy any frosted cake you like, cut a slit in its side, insert a bean or a trinket, and smooth the icing over the cut.

• You can also put both a bean and a pea in your cake, as the English do, and the people who find them become dual monarchs.

• In Portugal, whoever finds the bean not only is crowned king or queen but also must make the cake the following year.

• If you have any fears that a bean could wind up stuck in the throat of one of your guests, use a large coin or trinket instead. (In France the cake usually contains a small china doll.)