Epiphany and Its Customs

The Adoration of the Magi, 1525-30, by Girolamo da Santacroce 

Epiphany is a great feast in both East and West, albeit with different inflections. In the Byzantine and other Eastern rites, Christmas begins a holy period that culminates with Epiphany; Epiphany, therefore, is the greatest feast of the Christmas season. In the Roman and other Western rites, Christmas begins a holy period that plateaus and ends with Epiphany. Christmas and Epiphany are on par with each other. The Western understanding is reflected in a rare word for Epiphany once used in Scotland. Uphalimass (pronounced up-HAL-ee-muss) designates the Mass that wraps up the holidays, for “up” can denote completion as well as what is above.

“Epiphany” is the Greek word for manifestation and refers to Christ’s manifestation of His divinity: understandably, then, the Byzantine Rite prefers the word “Theophany” or “Manifestation of God.” The feast celebrates three manifestations in particular: the manifestation of Christ to the Magi, the first manifestation of His miraculous power at the Wedding of Cana, and the manifestation of His sonship when He was baptized by St. John in the Jordan River. The Benedictus antiphon for Lauds is a marvelous fusion of these three miracles:

Hodie caelesti Sponso juncta est Ecclesia, quoniam in Jordane lavit Christus ejus crimina; currunt cum muneribus Magi ad regales nuptiales, et ex aqua facto vino laetantur convivae, alleluja.

Which I translate as:

Today the Church was joined to her heavenly Spouse, because her Anointed One washed away her sins in the Jordan; Magi run to the royal wedding with gifts, and the guests rejoice with wine made from water, alleluia.

Although all three miracles are honored by both East and West, for most Protestants and Western-rite Catholics, the manifestation to the Magi takes center stage on this day while among Eastern Christians it is Christ’s baptism. Several Roman Catholic cultures attest to this preference with the name they give Epiphany, such as “King’s Day” in Mexico.

Proclamation of Feasts

Today we take our calendars for granted, but in former ages it was not so. Early Christians relied on the calculations of scholars from Alexandria (considered the most competent) to determine the date of Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox. Those calculations would be solemnly announced on the Epiphany, which was a sensible choice since the feast celebrates an astronomical event, and it is not far from the seasons of Lent and Easter. The chant used for the proclamation, which is the same as that of the Easter Vigil Exultet, is called the Noveritis.

Magi Plays

Did you know that the theater in the Western world, after it died out in ancient Greece and Rome, was brought back to life by the worship of the Church? The earliest medieval plays began as theatrical reenactments of Gospel passages of the day (Easter, Good Friday, etc). Epiphany had an “Office of the Star” tied to the liturgy of the feast and staged in the sanctuary of the church, but over time it grew out of hand. The character Herod was portrayed as a raging lunatic, overthrowing furniture and beating clergy and laity alike with a wooden stick. Church officials decided to ban the play from the sanctuary, at which point it moved outside and became a popular medieval entertainment. William Shakespeare remembered these plays from his childhood, before they were banned by England’s Protestant leaders. In Hamlet, the young prince declares that overacting “out-Herods Herod” (III.ii.13). Tamer versions of the medieval Epiphany play continue to exist in the German tradition of Sternsingen and the Spanish tradition of the festival of Los Tres Rejes.

Sternsingen 2019 (Blackface not recommended)

Blessing of Homes

An even older custom is the blessing of one’s home on the Epiphany. A priest comes to the house, sprinkles each room with holy water, and incenses them.

But the more common practice is the blessing of one’s house with chalk. At church the priest blesses chalk and sprinkles it with holy water, saying:

Bless, O Lord God, this creature chalk, that it may be salutary for mankind; and, through the invocation of Thy most holy name, grant that whoever obtains some of it or writes with it upon the doors of their home the names of Thy saints, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, may, through their intercession and merits, receive health of body and protection of soul. Through Christ our Lord. ℟. Amen.

The faithful then take the chalk home with them and write on the lintel of their doors the current year along with the letters C, M, and B, interspersed by crosses—e.g., 20+C+M+B+22.

Because it is a product of clay, chalk is a fitting symbol for the human nature assumed by the Word whose incarnation we celebrate this season. The year signifies the time that has elapsed since the Savior’s birth into human history, the crosses represent Christ Himself and the holiness of the Magi, and the letters represent the initials of the three kings: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. These same letters can also stand for Christus mansionem benedicat—May Christ bless this house.

Blessing the home on Epiphany is appropriate. Just as the wise men visited the temporary home of the Infant Jesus and brought Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (symbols of His kingship, divinity, and burial), so too do we pray that Christ may visit our temporary (earthly) home with gifts of grace and peace for ourselves and our guests.

Epiphany Carols

People are (or at least used to be) still in a caroling mood on Epiphany. One noteworthy custom is the star carol. From the fourteenth century to the Reformation, groups would go from house to house holding the Star of Bethlehem and announcing through song that they were the Magi telling of their adventures. The custom, which was a simplified form of the medieval Epiphany play, still exists in Austria and Bavaria (where it is called Sternsingen) and in Slavic countries.

We suspect that the author of the most popular Epiphany carol in the English language and perhaps the world was aware of this tradition. John Henry Hopkins, Jr. was rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and the music teacher at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. For his final year of teaching at the seminary (1857), he wrote “We Three Kings” for a Christmas pageant they were having. Hopkins wrote both the music and the lyrics for the song which was rare: usually, the lyrics were written by one person and the tune by another. The carol also holds the honor of being the first Christmas-Epiphany carol from the United States achieving worldwide popularity: even the British and the French like it. The song aptly impersonates all three kings in the first verse, Melchior in the second, Balthasar in the third, and Caspar in the fourth, while the chorus praises the Christmas Star. By the time the carol is over, the singer or hearer knows who the three kings are, what gifts they brought, and what deeper meaning the gifts have. Written in the distinctive Aeolian mode, it smacks of music from the Middle Ages and Middle East. The first verse is:

We three kings of Orient are;

Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

Field and fountain,

Moor and mountain,

Following yonder star.

Gift-Giving

In Italy and Spanish-speaking countries, Epiphany rather than Christmas is the occasion for exchanging gifts. In Italy, the old woman Befana brings the presents; in Spanish-speaking countries, is the Magi.

Some cultures split the difference and exchange gifts on both Christmas and Epiphany. In French Canada, Epiphany was nicknamed “Little Christmas.” The practice of opening presents over a period of days makes sense, since children who open all their gifts in a mad frenzy on Christmas morning often become unappreciative and lethargic afterwards.

Befana, a corruption of the word “Epiphany,” gives gifts to children in Italy on her feast day

Blessing of Water

As we mentioned earlier, Epiphany also celebrates the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, which according to Catholic and Orthodox belief is the moment when Christ sanctified water, making it capable of communicating the grace of the sacrament of baptism. It is therefore customary to bless water on this day. The Roman Catholic Church has a traditional and elaborate blessing of water that takes place on the eve of Epiphany and requires, among other things, several exorcisms and infusing the water with a little salt.

Other Christian churches use this occasion to bless natural bodies of water. In the Holy Land, after the River Jordan is blessed, thousands plunge themselves into the water three times to receive a blessing. In Egypt, the same thing traditionally happens in the Nile; locals also lead their domestic animals into the river for a blessing and dip their religious objects into the river for the same reason. After the priest blesses a body of water, he throws a cross into it. The men of the town then compete to retrieve it; the one who does has good luck for the year. And the blessing has the added advantage of driving away the Christmas demons. The Greeks also use occasion to bless their boats and ships.

Food and Drink

The signature food for Epiphany (or, sometimes, the night before) is King’s Cake. A small object is put in a cake. Traditionally, it was a coin; more recently, it is a small figurine of the Infant Jesus. Whoever finds the object in their piece of the cake is king of the merry party. In Austria, Germany, France, England, and Canada, the King’s Cake contained a bean and a pea; finding the bean made one a king while the pea made one a queen.

The custom was also tied to charity. In France a piece of cake was put aside “for our Lord” and given to a poor person. Another French tradition required each person to pay for his piece of cake. The money collected, called “the gold of the Magi,” would be given to the poor or to help pay for the education of a promising but disadvantaged youth.

In Mexico, rosca de Reyes or Kings’ Day Bread is a wreath-shaped loaf with cinnamon, anise seed, vanilla extract, and dried fruit. The dinner guest who finds the Baby Jesus in his slice must make the tamales for the next gathering. A similar custom exists in Spain. Roscón de Reyes is a delicious oval, cream-filled pastry with a hidden bean and a surprise. Whoever finds the surprise gets good luck for the year; whoever finds the bean has to buy the next roscón.

Ukrainian Christmas Customs: A Documentary From 1942

For those who follow the Julian Calendar, today is the feast of the Theophany in the Byzantine Rite. This is as good an occasion as any to share this delightful documentary made in 1942 about the various customs of what many still call “Ukrainian Christmas,” customs brought to the New World by immigrants to Canada, both Catholic and Orthodox. Although it doesn’t show much of the liturgy, it covers a lot of religious and folk traditions associated with the liturgical season. (My thanks to an old and dear friend, Fr Athanasius McVay, a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest of the Eparchy of Edmonton, Canada, for bringing this to my attention.)

There is also a second film in the same vein, from a year later, which covers many different aspects of the life of these communities. The first half is about pioneer life and farming, but starting from about 6:50, it talks about the various religious institutions founded by the Ukrainians in Canada.

Sacred Art for Many Epiphanies: An Artistic Reflection

Here is some sacred art to help us meditate upon the Feast of the Epiphany in a couple of days’ time.

The three events commemorated on this feast are the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, and the Wedding Feast at Cana. The fact that three mysteries are commemorated was made apparent to me through the antiphon to the Magnificat at Vespers:

Three mysteries mark this holy day: today the star leads the Magi to the infant Christ; today water is changed into wine for the wedding feast; today Christ wills to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation.

My understanding is that initially, all these epiphanies would have been celebrated on the single feast day, with the focus on the Adoration of the Magi; in time, the Baptism in the Jordan was commemorated on the Octave day a week later, and the Wedding at Cana  on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany.

Christmas Day, the Nativity of the Lord, is a fourth epiphany that in a certain sense anticipates this Feast; in the Byzantine Rite, the Gospel of the Divine Liturgy on Christmas is that of the Adoration of the Magi. Similarly, the feast of the Circumcision, eight days after Christmas in the TLM calendar and the non-Roman Catholic Churches, the associated feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, and the feast of the Presentation on February 2nd all seem to me to in some regard participations in the great Epiphany or Theophany and which orbit it, directing our attention to it.

I have chosen one image from each of the traditional styles of sacred art considered appropriate for the liturgy in the Roman church - Gothic, 17th century baroque, and iconographic. This is for no reason other than a desire to introduce variety; other things being equal, it is legitimate to represent any subject of the Faith in any of the three styles.

First, the Adoration of the Magi. I chose this Gothic-style painting by Gentile de Fabriano, dating from the first quarter of the 15th century, which shows the place of Our Lord’s birth as a cave, and St Joseph as an old man, in harmony with the tradition on these historical facts.

The image is so detailed that much is not clear  at the magnification in this posting, so if you wish to see a larger reproduction online, please go to the Wikimedia Commons page, here. I love the rich detail in the garments of the Magi that communicates wealth, and which is contrasted with the simple deep ultramarine blue of the robe of the Virgin, and the nakedness of Our Lord.

Now the Wedding Feast at Cana. Here is a painting by the Spanish artist Murillo from 1672 in the Baroque style. The link through to a larger online reproduction can be found here.

The variation of shade and light directs our attention to the bread on the table, which is dressed with a cloth like an altar, and the wine in the amphora before it, with a single amphora on the left separated from the rest which are grouped together. Our Lord, on the left, is direct our attention with his gesture to this amphora, which I am presuming contains the new, good wine which is located vertically below (as it appears on the plane of the painting) the bread.

Finally, here is an icon by one of my favorite artists, the Russian Gregory Krug, who died in 1969.

Father Krug’s depiction omits details often included in the Theophany (or Epiphany) icon. For example, one might expect to see a small tree with an axe, which recalls Matthew’s account of the words of Sr John the Baptist, who asserted that every tree which does not bear fruit will be hewn down and burnt. Also, very often large fish ridden by human figures are often shown, swimming away from Christ; these are personifications of the Red Sea and the Jordan being driven back, as mentioned in Psalm 113.

The omission of these details puts the focus of this icon even more clearly on the revelation of Jesus as the Son, and the second person of the Trinity. The angel at the top is looking directly at the Holy Spirit, manifested as a dove.

The iconographic style focuses on a representation of all subjects in the context of the heavenly dimension. They shimmer with the uncreated light of God. Gregory Krug’s style of iconography demonstrates this powerfully as he skillfully uses the artistic device of multiple layered scumbles of light-toned transparent paint over darker-toned bases. This accentuates the core truth of this icon, that Christ is revealing Himself as a person who is both human and divine, and Krug seems to rely as much on the effect of shimmering light in his style of painting to communicate this as he does on the content. Furthermore, in this event the waters are not cleansing Christ; rather Christ is cleansing the waters, and through this, it speaks of the redemption of all of Creation. This shimmering effect is extended therefore in this rendition beyond the waters to the rocks in the embankments.

In his account of the Baptism, St Matthew (3, 16) tells us that “heaven opened and the Spirit of God descended like a dove.” This is represented visually by the mandorla that surrounds the dove. It begins by getting brighter as you move inwards through the concentric layers, but then becomes darkest in the center as it becomes the Light that blinds.

The Season of Revelation: The Feast of Theophany/Epiphany

Icon of Theophany

Yesterday, for those of the Byzantine tradition on the Gregorian calendar, was the second day of the octave of Theophany, the Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner. That feast is worthy of a post in its own right, the fourth major feast of St. John on the Calendar, making him a strong analogue to the Theotokos: both have a feast commemorating their conception (Sept. 23; Dec. 9), their birth (June 24; Sept. 8), and their death (Aug. 29; Aug. 15), and both have a synaxis the day after a major Christological feast commemorating their mediating role in salvation (Synaxis of the Theotokos on Dec. 26, and Synaxis of the Baptizer on Jan. 7). But more on that another time.

For those on the Julian calendar, however, yesterday was not January 7th, but Dec. 25th. Hence, for Eastern Christians in Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Israel (where the Latin Catholics already celebrated on Dec. 25th and the Armenians will celebrate on January 18) Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Kazahkstan, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, as well as various diaspora communities worldwide, yesterday was Christmas. While this ambiguity may stand out, the question about the proper date of the feast of Christmas is an old question that long predates the 16th-century creation of the Gregorian calendar, albeit the reasons for the question were different.

The Armenian observance of Christmas on Jan. 6, (January 18 due to the Julian calendar discrepancy) highlights the original question of the early Church: when to observe the feast of Theopany, that is, the feast of God’s revelation, and what is commemorated by that feast? The Armenian calendar observes a Theophany fast from Dec. 30-January 4th (a strict fast where traditionally no food at all is consumed), and then celebrates the Feast of Theophany, a feast which includes three dates: Jan. 6 for the Nativity of Christ, January 13 for the naming of Jesus, and Feb. 14 for the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple. This one feast of Theophany, therefore, extends to several distinct moments when God shines forth into our world: his birth, circumcision/naming, and meeting with Simeon. Each event is striking: angels singing to shepherds and the stars speaking to pagans, the revelation of the name of God that succeeds the revelation of the burning bush, and Simeon’s recognition of Jesus as the “light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of the God’s people, Israel.” The one feast is the feast of revelation, and the Armenians have come to observe the above three events as those which most exceptionally characterize revelation.

St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 190 A.D.) is the first to reference the observance of the feast in his Stromata:

And there are those, out of over-curiosity, who have determined not only the year of our Lord's birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, and in the twenty-fifth day of Pachon (20 May). And the followers of Basilides hold the day of his baptism as a festival, spending the night before in readings. And they say that it was the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar, the fifteenth day of the month Tubi (Jan. 6); and some that it was the eleventh of the same month (Jan. 10). And treating of His passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the sixteenth year of Tiberius, on the twenty-fifth of Phamenoth; and others the twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi and others say that on the nineteenth of Pharmuthi the Saviour suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi (Apr. 19 or 20).

It is entirely possible that Basilidians’ observance of the Baptism was connected with their observance of Christ’s birth (which may or may not be deliberately implied here by Clement), although what led to this association is unknown. Some have speculated it had to do with Basilides’ theory that Christ received his Divinity at the Baptism, an idea that came to be linked to a variant reading of Luke 3:22. Whereas the best Greek manuscripts of the Gospel attribute the same message to God the Father as in Matthew and Mark: “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” the Codex Bessae (Manuscript D), the Old Latin, and several early fathers cite Luke 3:22 as “You are my beloved Son, today I have begotten you.” While this version certainly lent itself to Adoptionist heretics who held that Christ became the Son of God at that moment, there is a strong tradition of Orthodox interpretation of the verse, beginning with Justin Martyr and continuing through Clement of Alexandria, Origen (who in this case was orthodox), Methodius of Olympus, Ephraim the Syrian, and even upheld by St. Augustine in his Harmony of the Gospels. The Ethiopian Didascalia picks up the link between baptism and begetting, and prescribes that the bishop lay his hands on the newly baptized and declare, “You are my sons; today I have begotten you.”  This same language is adopted in the Apostolic Constitutions; baptism was connected with the day of one’s birth.  This link between the Baptism of Christ and His begetting may be central to the Basilidians’ identification of the two events, and it certainly underlies the subsequent develops in the orthodox east.

For all the orthodox interpreters of the variant in Luke 3:22, the message is the same: the begetting of Christ refers to his public manifestation as the Messiah. Beginning with Justin Martyr, to be known is to be born. Thus, Christ’s birth is fundamentally a reference to the revelation of Him. What makes the Nativity a great event is not so much the Incarnation (that Mystery takes place at the Annunciation), but the revelation of the Incarnation. Angels make known the event to the shepherds, the stars make known the King to the Magi. The Nativity is an event of revelation, and thus the more full revelation of Jesus’ ministry is the second birth of Christ.

The reason for the date of January 6th seems linked to the date of the original Easter. In the quote from Clement, we already see a desire to link the date of Christ’s passover with date of his birth; he notes that those who held Easter to be on April 20th also wanted to suggest that the Nativity was on the same date. From early on the popular Christian imagination desired an exact number for our Lord’s age, although the group mentioned by Clement was not as precise as others, who made their calculations correspond not to the birth but to the conception of Christ. Eventually, when Tertullian’s suggestion that our Lord died on March 25 (cf. Adv. Jud. 8) became normative, so did the belief that the conception took place on March 25. Another tradition, attributed by Sozomen to the Montanists, held that Easter took place on April 6th; hence too, the argument would run, His conception, and thus his birth would be on January 6th.

From early on in Church history, therefore, we can see three things: 1) a desire to correlate the date of Easter with the date of Christ’s conception; 2) a preference for liturgically commemorating the birth of Christ over his conception, because 3) the link of birth with revelation. The early Church, therefore, while calculating the date for the conception of Christ, wanted to liturgically observe the revelation of the Incarnation before they turned their attention to commemorating the event of the Incarnation proper.

St. Athanasius in his masterpiece, On the Incarnation, lays out a theology that captures the fundamental principles behind the Early Church's concern for commemorating revelation.  In the work, Athanasius lays out the two-fold dilemma that led to the Word’s Incarnation: 1) the dilemma of death and 2) the dilemma of ignorance. The dilemma of death, namely the scandal of God’s own image being condemned to perpetual corruption, was resolved, according to Athanasius, by the event of Easter. Hence, the feast of Easter was principally a feast commemorating God's destruction of death. But the dilemma of ignorance was another major problem: man had been created logical, that is, given a share in the Logos, the Word of God. But now he only knew earthly realities, not the Word. Thus, along with fixing the problem of death, the Word needed to fix the problem of mankind’s ignorance of God. When the early Church went to expand her observance of the liturgical calendar, therefore, it was only fitting that the next feast correspond to Christ’s victory over ignorance, just as Easter corresponded to his victory over death.

Subsequent to Clement’s note, the first reference to the formal observance of the feast of Epiphany is in 361, but while the East seemed confident in the good of observing a feast of revelation, the content of that feast was more ambiguous. St. Epiphanius claims that the feast of Epiphany is the feast of the shining forth of Christ’s birth, but places Christ’s baptism in November. At the same time, he argues that Epiphany also commemorates the miracle of the wedding of Cana, and Ambrose suggests that the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves is captured by the Feast. But the focus on Baptism became dominant in Constantinople, Syria, and Alexandria. The ultimate Theophany was held to take place at the Baptism: both the public “birth” of Christ’s ministry, and the first public revelation of the Trinity. This is still the central theme of the Troparion for the feast:

When you were baptized in the Jordan, o Christ, worship of the Trinity was revealed. The voice of the Father bore witness to you, calling you His Beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the certainty of these words. Glory to you, o Christ, who enlightened and sanctified the world.

In Jerusalem, however, the birth of Christ took a central role in the Theophany feast, probably due to the proximity of Bethlehem. The Syrians kept the dual focus of the birth and the baptism, and eventually the Armenian focus on the 6th as the day of the Nativity would win out. It is debated when January 6th was adopted by the Romans, but the most likely hypothesis is that Rome became acquainted with the feast of Theophany in the East, but chose to observe the feast on December 25th for a variety of hypothesized reasons.

Following Rome’s adoption of December 25, a new tendency arises in the East, namely, to split the observances of Theophany over two days: December 25th to correspond to the Nativity after the pattern of Rome, and January 6th to emphasize the fulfillment of the revelation promised at Christmas. Jerusalem was slow to adopt the change since it observed the feasts of St. David the King and St. James, brother of our Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem on December 25. (The Byzantine calendar subsequently to the adoption of December 25 as Christmas, moved that feast to the Sunday after Christmas, and added St. Joseph to the commemoration.) St. John Chrysostom seems to have been hugely influential in getting Antioch to make this change, and St. Gregory the Theologian promoted it in Constantinople. In fact, Gregory’s festal homilies for Christmas and Theophany propose a theological vision for the three great feasts of the Church that correspond to the three births of Christ: His birth at Christmas, His birth at his Baptism, and His birth as first-born of the dead, at Easter.  In Gregory’s homily on Christmas, he also gives the Byzantine Church its liturgical language for the feast, focusing his reflections on Christmas as revelation. His description of the revelation to the Magi, in fact, becomes the language of the troparion for the feast:

Your Nativity, O Christ our God, shed upon the world the light of knowledge. For by it, those who worshiped a star, were taught by a star to worship you the Sun of Righteousness and to know You the Orient from on high. O Lord, glory to you.

The liturgical observances for Christmas were patterned off of those for Theophany, which in turn were patterned off of those from Easter. Christmas and Theophany came to be seen as one pole that corresponded to the other pole of the liturgical year, Easter. In Rome, the feast of the Epiphany was eventually adopted on January 6th, but there was a decidedly focus on the Nativity in it. Hence, Christmas was focused on the revelation to the shepherds, Epiphany on the revelation to the Magi, and following that, a feast of the Baptism. The Milanese explicitly kept a focus on the three miracles of the day for January 6th: the manifestation to the Magi, the Baptism, and the Wedding at Cana (a focus for Epiphanius, and still observed two days after Epiphany on the Coptic Calendar but not the Byzantine), but Rome originally focused only on the Magi. Others suggest the possibility of including the Transfiguration on this day, a suggestion that doesn’t catch on in a meaningful way.

Subsequent to the establishment of the twin dates of Christmas and Epiphany, other great feasts began to be commemorated in the Byzantine tradition, but in many ways, all 12 of our great feasts can be seen as developments of either the triumph over ignorance or the triumph over death. Thus as a kind of unfolding of Easter we have Palm Sunday, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Dormition, and the Exaltation of the Cross. And from the revelation of Christ at Theophany we take first Christmas, then the Annunciation, the Transfiguration, the birth of Mary and her entrance to the temple, and Christ’s meeting of Simeon.

If we accept a view of the liturgical year that revolves around the twin axes of Revelation and Redemption, it certainly seems like the Armenians are onto something when they call this entire season the Feast of Theophany. And regardless of how the days are split up in East and West, regardless of the interesting transfer of the date of Epiphany for the West, and even regardless of the further ambiguity created by the Gregorian calendar, in this general season with a  variety of different ways of expressing those days, lets us all celebrate the splendor of God’s revelation in Christ.

Blessed Theophany!