Holidays & Festivals
Epiphany
Feasts
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The manifestation of Christ to the nations, kept on January 6 and the origin of the twelve days of Christmas that lead up to it. In the West the day centres on the visit of the Magi, hence its popular name Three Kings' Day, Dia de los Reyes, and in much of the Spanish-speaking world it, not December 25, is the day gifts are given, with a ring-shaped roscon de reyes hiding a figure of the child. Water, chalk and homes are blessed; the initials of the traditional names of the Magi are marked over the door.
Facts
Reckoning
Calendar SystemGregorian (civil solar) 2 Date Rule6 January; the Sunday between 2 and 8 January where transferred 2 Fixed or MovableFixed date in its own calendar 2 Origins
Era of Composition Era of CompositionClement of Alexandria records an earlier Basilidean observance 1 Observance
Observance Type Learn More
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.
Kings, Chalk and Cold Water
Popular observance splits along the same East-West line. In much of Catholic and Protestant Europe and Latin America the day is Three Kings' Day, a gift-giving climax to Christmas: children receive presents said to come from the Magi, the rosca de reyes or galette des rois is eaten with a hidden token that makes the finder king for the day, and the letters C+M+B (for the traditional names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, and for a Latin blessing of the house) are chalked over doorways.
In the Orthodox world the day is the Theophany, and its great rite is the Great Blessing of Waters: the clergy bless water in church and at rivers, lakes and harbours, and in many countries a cross is thrown into the water for swimmers to retrieve in the winter cold. The two families of custom, the kings and the blessing of the waters, both flow from the single idea of manifestation, and Epiphany closes the Christmas cycle much as it opened the year for the earliest churches.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
In the West the day of Epiphany centres on the visit of the magi.
Belongs to Tradition
Found In
Epiphany, within Christmastide.
Observed In
The Epiphany falls on 6 January, closing the twelve days of Christmas in the Western churches.
Related To
Christmastide, in the older reckoning, runs the twelve days from the Nativity to Epiphany, the older and in the East still the greater feast of the incarnation.
Timing Rules
Sources
1. The Origins of the Liturgical Year
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. EpiphanyView the Source The Book of Common Prayer
Church of England; ed. Brian Cummings, Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2011View the Source The Study of Anglicanism
Stephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.), SPCK / Fortress Press, 1998
Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar
Paul VI (motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis), Holy See, 1969
Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations
J. Gordon Melton (editor), ABC-CLIO, 2011Epiphany and the twelve daysView the Source The Holy Bible
Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 1611Matthew 2:1-12, the visit of the MagiView the Source The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning
Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Oxford University Press, 1999View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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