Mixed Moss

So, Saturday (the sixth of January) was Epiphany. My favorite holiday.

What is Epiphany, you ask? It is the holiday celebrating the day the three magi, a.k.a. wise men, a.k.a. kings, arrived to find the baby Jesus, who wasn’t such a baby any more– about two years old, they say. Definitely progressed well into the realm of “yard ape” at that point.

Why is it my favorite holiday? Because it is about the ultimate road trip. Lol. No, but really it is a journey, isn’t it? See the magi saw the star. They knew what it meant– probably because they had the scriptures Daniel had written eons ago while living in captivity in their country– and so they knew the King had been born. But just because they knew all that, didn’t mean that they were done. And that’s just like us. We accept Christ as the only way to be saved, as the only way to get through life; but that doesn’t mean we know him yet; it just means that we’ve truly come to know ourselves and how much we need him. In order to find God– truly figure out who he is and get to know him– well, that takes a while. It’s a journey. It’s a process. And God cares enough to go through that process with us, to let us know him. In fact, it’s his pleasure.

So in a way, Christmas is a celebration of the fact that God came for us, and is mixed with some sadness that mankind didn’t honor him, but relegated him to a stable. Easter is a celebration of the fact that God saved us, and is mixed with some sadness that it was our fault he had to die. But Epiphany, that’s pure joy, because it celebrates the fact that despite difficulty and danger, we can come to know who he is.

Probably another reason it’s my favorite is that when I was a kid, my dad had this tradition where we’d put our shoes out the night before and leave a bowl of oats. The “Kings” would stop by to feed their “camels,” and leave little presents in our shoes. I’m not quite sure where he got this tradition from, but somewhere in Europe.

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Now for you info junkies (aka people with the strength of “Input”): interesting facts about Epiphany. It is the twelfth day of Christmas. No, seriously, as in ten drummers drumming, eleven lords a-leaping, twelve pipers piping. In Elizabethan times they celebrated Christmas as one long twelve-day festival, hence the song with its impossible-to-remember array of gifts. (Although for the really rich, the season might be extended longer– in fact, in some countries it kicked off the carnival season). The night before Epiphany was known as Twelfth Night (kinda like we celebrate Christmas Eve), and apparently there was typically a masked ball held that night. If not a masked ball, then some kind of confusing and misleading amusement; because there was a strong association with the natural order of things being reversed. I’m not sure why. Some say it was because Kings came to worship a poor boy in a stable; some say it’s a throw-back to old pagan holidays and traditions.

Sound familiar, English students? Yes, Twelfth Night is the name of a Shakespearean play. Incidentally one of my favorites, because it has twins and I’m a twin. The play was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to be performed as part of the Epiphany celebrations for the year 1602 (which at that time did not end until Candlemas, in early February!), in order to entertain the Duke of Bracciano, who was visiting from Italy. It was performed before the court on twelfth night and debuted in London on Candlemas. It is said that Shakespeare thanked her for the commission by including she and the Duke in his play; Orsino’s name is very similar to that of the Duke’s, Orsini; and Olivia, in looks and mannerism, was said to be very, well, Elizabethan. There are lots of allusions to the holiday in the play; disguises, cases of mistaken identity, people making fools of themselves, and the character Feste, who was the Fool, is actually quite the wisest character in the play.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 9:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.