Today is Epiphany, or the Feast of the Epiphany, or Theophany, or Three Kings’ Day. Epiphany is one of the three principle and oldest festival days of the Christian church — the other two being Easter and Christmas.
In Rome, by 354 Christ’s birth was being celebrated on December 25, and later in the 4th century the church in Rome began celebrating Epiphany on January 6. Today, in the Western church, Epiphany primarily commemorates the visit by the Magi to the infant Jesus, which is seen as evidence that Christ, the Jewish Messiah, came also for the salvation of Gentiles. In the Eastern church, it primarily commemorates the baptism of Jesus and celebrates the revelation that the incarnate Christ was both fully God and fully man.
The word epiphany isn’t totally a Christian term. The word comes from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning manifestation. Zeus’s alias was Epiphanes….
Today kind of marks the end of the Christmas season for a lot of people, but I’m pretty sure our Christmas trees will be around a while longer.
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