The Epiphany of our Lord — Epiphany for short — is the liturgical festival observed on January 6. The oldest Christmas festival, and originally the most important, It is still the climax of the Christmas season in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, where it is celebrated as Theophany. Epiphany as a season of the Lutheran liturgical calendar lasts until the beginning of Lent and encompasses four to nine Sundays, depending on the date of Easter.
The festival has not gone unnoticed by the media, which is nice. Much of the coverage is of the local color variety — with brief articles and photos of Epiphany celebrations. The Times Herald-Record (N.Y.) looks at a Lutheran church’s Christmas pageant — held on Epiphany (observed in some churches last Sunday) as opposed to late in Advent.
For those confused about when the 12th night of Christmas falls, this Telegraph story was no help, but it was fun.
Epiphany is celebrated with particular fervor in many Spanish-speaking countries. The BBC’s brief look at Madrid’s annual parade made me wish I was there. The Los Angeles Times reported on a 1,600-meter-long Rosca de Reyes baked by local bakers.
This Democrat and Chronicle (N.Y.) article caught my eye:
At the Church of the Assumption, part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, packets containing a piece of chalk and a prayer were handed out during the service. Families took these packets home to write “20 CMB 09” above their front door with the chalk.
The numbers indicate the current year and “CMB” stands for the “Christus Mansionem Benedicat,” which — translated from Latin — means “May God bless this house.”
How bad does your Latin have to be to translate Christus as “God”?
The coverage of Epiphany celebrations in Tarpon Springs, Florida, is truly remarkable. Apparently the Greek Orthodox churches there have huge celebrations that bring in visitors far and wide. Rita Farlow, St. Petersburg Times reporter, has the beat covered, with several stories on the festivities. Here’s a portion of one story:
Between 8,000 and 10,000 people are expected for the city’s 103rd Epiphany celebration today, which begins with services at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral and ends with an eight-hour Glendi.
In between, 65 young men will dive to retrieve this year’s Epiphany cross. The teen who finds the cross will receive a special blessing that is supposed to bring him a year of prosperity.
The reporter profiled a young woman who will release a dove as part of the festivities. A Suncoast News story looked back on the year had by the winner of last year’s dive.
No matter how big or small the stories on Epiphany and Theophany were, they all handled the theological significance pretty well. Some media outlets used the occasion to get into deeper religious themes. The Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette ran a piece by an Orthodox priest. Beliefnet’s Patton Dodd had an epiphany while teaching an Epiphany Sunday School lesson. The Rev. Peg Chamberlin’s regular column in the Star-Tribune dealt with the topic. And the Santa Barbara Independent had an interesting piece on the similarities between Epiphany and Theopany:
One interesting aspect of these two parallel holidays is that they’re much more similar, theologically speaking, than they would appear. To a secular observer, a visit from three Magi and a dip in the river Jordan are entirely different activities; their connection appears obscure. To a Christian scholar, however, they’re both manifestations of Christ as the son of God.
She goes on to describe particular aspects of how the holy days are celebrated. So all in all, not a bad treatment of this major festival. Please let us know if you saw any particularly good or bad coverage of the day and season.
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Comments (12) |
January 6, 2009, at 1:58 pm
Well, although nobody but me seems to have considered it as an Epiphany story, I woke up this morning to an NPR report on recent developments in cosmology. Seems that the Milky Way is half again as massive as astronomers thought, meaning that it will collide with the Andromeda galaxy that much sooner.
Get the connection? News about the stars.
I think it’s a coincidence; the new estimate of the galaxy’s mass was just announced at a conference yesterday, so it isn’t as though editors all over the country woke up and said, “Hey, let’s do a story about how, instead of learning about salvation from a star, we are all going to be destroyed by the collision of stars. In five billion years or less.”
Still, funny how these things work out.
January 6, 2009, at 2:38 pm
Mollie:
I thought my very German Catholic family was an outlier, celebrating Epiphany with presents, a feast, a family pageant (My dad always played Herod, a role I was thrilled to assume for my own children) and the chalk markings above the door. On my first trip to southern Germany, I found we weren’t so unusual after all.
One thing,though. I was always told the C,M and B represented the traditionally assigned names of the magi in the West — Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar — names which apparently date to the mid to late first millennium. This is the first I’ve ever heard of the initials standing for a Latin phrase.
January 6, 2009, at 4:04 pm
Brian:
A short piece in my Catholic bulletin on Sunday said that the C, M and B can stand for either the names or the phrase. The practice is so old that probably everybody has forgotten how it all actually started.
The piece also said that German kids go door to door and beg for candy. If they get some, they say a prayer for the people in the house and this year would mark the house with chalk - 20 C M B 09.
January 6, 2009, at 4:49 pm
One of the antiphons (for Vespers I think) from the Catholic Divine Office of Epiphany mentions three epiphanies: the coming of the Magi, the baptism in the Jordan, and the changing of water to wine at Cana.
January 6, 2009, at 6:33 pm
Dev:
Can’t remember the name of the piece, but at Mass we sang a hymn that included all those three “manifestations” of Christ that you mention. That’s why the Christmas season supposedly ends this Sunday with the baptism of the Lord. Shame on me I don’t know the date for the miracle at Cana, but I’ll bet it’s this week.
January 6, 2009, at 11:53 pm
My local paper, Contra Costa Times, had a couple of articles emphasizing the Latin connection as you noted. I don’t think there’s much more than fluff in the stories, but it was interesting to me that they covered it at all: http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_11384115
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_11369268
January 7, 2009, at 7:51 am
Jerry:
I think you mean “Latino” and not “Latin”.
The Contra Costa Times stories seem to report that Jan. 6 is unique to Latin Americans. The writer also doesn’t seem to know what February 2nd is - Candlemas, that is also not unique to Latinos.
And FWIW Magi doesn’t mean “kings”. It means wise men. That was the term for the men who studied the stars in Iran - the Zoroastrian astrologers. Somewhere along the way, the two were conflated.
January 7, 2009, at 8:19 am
Sorry - me, again.
The problems with the Contra Costa Times stories are indicative of a common problem - the failure to distinguish between universal Catholic beliefs, rituals, sacraments, calendar, etc. and the customs surrounding same that may differ from one country or culture to another.
January 7, 2009, at 11:05 am
While I’ve seen no “war on Epiphany” I have noticed that Dora the Explorer is “saving three kings day” which is described only as a “traditional Hispanic holiday” with no religious roots mentioned at all.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=PR&Date=20081215&ID=9451095&Symbol=VIA
January 7, 2009, at 11:35 am
Mollie said:
I say:
Perhaps the reporter affirms the Athanasian Creed.
Often folks use “God” to mean “the Father.” It’s nice to hear an acknowledgement that Jesus is fully divine too!
Or was it just that the reporter was scared of words like “Christ”?
January 7, 2009, at 11:47 am
Sean,
I support any comment that invokes the Athanasian Creed. Good work.
January 7, 2009, at 2:05 pm
It’s still a wrong translation.