break up date variable

I’m trying to format each piece of the date into seperate spans/divs, as such:

<span>5</span> <div>Jan</div> <div>2009</div>

Have never used php, but am vaguely familiar with programming in Javascript, etc. I tried this, didn’t work:

<?php
$date = "</span> <div class=\"month\">";
$month = "</div> <div class=\"year\">";
the_date('j' + $date + 'M' + $month + 'Y', '<h2><span class="date">', '</div></h2>');
?>

The variables were ignored. The end result was <h2><span class="date">5 Jan 2009</div></h2>

Any ideas?