The annual routine of the court culminated in the twelve days of merrymaking that constituted a Tudor Christmas. Henry VIII usually kept the festival at Greenwich Palace. Christmas Day itself was then a holy day, devoted to acts of worship, but the days after it were given over to feasting and ‘disports’, the King celebrating Christ’s birth with ‘much nobleness and open court’. The festivities reached their climax on Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany, when they were usually brought to an end with a sumptuous banquet.
