| Epiphany
In order to more fully understand and appreciate
the Feast of the Epiphany and the Epiphany Season, it is
essential to first observe Advent.
The Season of Advent is a four week season that takes place
prior to Christmas. While many think Advent is “Christmas
preparation,” the actual purpose of Advent is to prepare
people for the second coming of Christ. In Advent, one of
the rituals is to light one additional candle each Sunday.
Thus, the 3rd Sunday in Advent witnesses the lighting of
three blue or purple candles. This is symbolic to mark the
move from “darkness to light.” On Christmas,
the church lights a fifth candle. This candle is white.
Twelve days after Christmas, is the Feast of the Epiphany.
Like Advent, this church season also deals with the theme
of light. In Epiphany, many of the scripture passages talk
of Jesus as the “light of the world,” or of
“spreading the light.” The word Epiphany is
a Greek word meaning appearance or manifestation. In fact,
for many centuries Epiphany was also called, “The
Manifestation to the Gentiles,” meaning to non-Jewish
people. Epiphany marks when the first non-Jewish people
acknowledged Jesus, thus seeing Jesus as the savior of humanity
and not just the Jews.
The Feast of the Epiphany is the date when the magi, the
kings, arrived to pay homage to the child Jesus. While legend
holds to the image of three kings we do not have any scripture
reference to how many leaders came. We assume there were
three because three gifts were presented. However, some
strong modern research indicates that the magi were in fact
astrologers!
As with most early Christmas festivals various congregations
and locations celebrated Christmas and Epiphany on different
dates. Eventually the church standardized specific dates.
Given that the church was growing Rome, and that the pagan
Romans already held a “Sun Festival” around
December 25, this date was chosen for Christmas. January
6th was chosen for Epiphany in the late second century.
Today, the Orthodox churches still mark the Nativity and
Epiphany on January 6th.
The Epiphany Season is considered a very appropriate period
for baptisms. In addition, many ‘house blessings,”
tend to take place in this period.
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