Epiphany

The holiday known as Epiphany is almost here. It is celebrated on January 6th, one day after The Twelfth Night.

*

This banner is hanging in our church sanctuary right now and depicts the "epiphany" of the Magi, as they finally found the infant Jesus. His Light revealed Him to them.

*

In searching for information about Epiphany, I ran into many mentions of "The Twelfth Night", which is the twelfth day of Christmas. In times past, The Twelfth Night was an important holiday in England, with its own special traditions.

*

Here's some info from a Twelfth Night website:

To Englishmen perhaps the best known feature of the secular festival is the Twelfth Cake. Some words of Leigh Hunt's will show what an important place this held in the mid-nineteenth century:—
“Christmas goes out in fine style,—with Twelfth Night. It is a finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night is the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. The whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are kings and queens. Everybody is somebody else, and learns at once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from his own, by enacting them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres, merry rooms, little holiday-faces, and, last not least, the painted sugar on the cakes, so bad to eat but so fine to look at, useful because it is perfectly useless except for a sight and a moral—all conspire to throw a giddy splendour over the last night of the season, and to send it to bed in pomp and colours, like a Prince.”

*

Epiphany link.

*

Another link.

*

The Twelfth Night: The Holiday That Time Forgot

*

And, last and least......my blogpost from a year ago,

Quantum Epiphany, which describes a Sunday School activity we did for Epiphany last year, and then somehow moves on to other strange ramblings......which you may not wish to read, as they are mostly random, weird thoughts........my pitiful attempt at connecting religion and science.

*

Wishing you a day of enlightening epiphanies!

*