Possible to use the_date twice in one loop?

I need to assign different CSS classes to different parts of the date but can’t figure out how to sparate parts of the date. For instance, I deally I’d do like

<?php the_date(‘M’, ‘<h2 class=”date-m”>’,'</h2>’); ?>
<?php the_date(‘d’, ‘<h2 class=”date-d”>’,'</h2>’); ?>

But it will only echo the first the_date.

Any ideas on how to echo it twice?