Ever wonder why we sing about 12 days of Christmas when, as a kid, we only ever had one day of Christmas to open presents on? Well, in Austria there's no need to wonder because the 12th day of Christmas is a holiday.The Christmastide (-tide coming from the German word "Zeit" or "time") stretches from Christmas day to the night of January 5/6 and signals the time when the "kings" or astrologers or magi or wise men came to visit the baby Jesus. It seems that popular culture has the wise men showing up minutes after the baby Jesus was born, but according to the story, it took the men (whether it was two or three or four, experts don't seem to know) 12 days to get to Bethlehem.
In German, the men are referred to as Könige or kings, but the term "king" was loosely used by the Romans in those times to denote any man of knowledge. Since the men used the position of a star in order to find Jesus, they were most likely astrologers, so the term "wise men" seems more fitting.
Scholars have argued about the number of wise men--in fact, there are some pieces of art in Europe that depict four wise men in the manger scene. The number three, though, appears in a lot of tales as a good number. There's the German saying, "Alle guten Dinge sind drei" or "All good things come in threes." So the wise men brought three gifts (gold befitting a king, frankincense befitting a priest, and myrrh befitting a healer or, in German, a "Heiler" which is related to the word "Heiland" or "savior"). Although the wise men probably all came from Middle East, there was a belief that they represented the three continents that people were aware of (Europe, Asia, Africa).
In Salzburg State and southern Bavaria, a largely Catholic area, it's common especially among the farmers to welcome the three kings to one's door. Many times, children come dressed in priestly outfits, sing a song, and then offer to write in chalk on people's entrances the first letter of what is thought to be their names (Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar) along with the year (see photo). This is left there throughout the year until the chalk wears off!
