The Feast Before Christmas Had a Date

Epiphany, on 6 January, is one of the oldest festivals of the Christian year, and in the Christian East it is older than Christmas and originally more important. Its name means "manifestation", and it celebrates the showing-forth of Christ to the world. In the West the day came to focus on the visit of the Magi, the gentile wise men of Matthew's Gospel, understood as the revelation of Christ to the nations; in the East it centres instead on the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan (kept in the West on the following Sunday), with the wedding at Cana as a third manifestation.

The relationship between Epiphany and Christmas is a matter of documented history rather than legend. Before the two feasts were distinguished, some Eastern churches celebrated the nativity and baptism together on 6 January; when 25 December was adopted for the nativity, the twelve days between the two feasts, "the twelve days of Christmas", were the result. The Armenian Church, which never adopted 25 December, still keeps the nativity on 6 January to this day, a living survival of the older arrangement.