Epiphany
____________________________________________________________________________________________

From Christmas to the Feast of the Epiphany: The Twelve Days
of Christmas at Christ Church

Over an extended period of time, a variety of holy days came to be appended to the Feast of the Incarnation. Some of those days were taken from secular holidays that pre-existed Christmas in the late Roman Empire; and these were gently transformed to fit in with the sense of Christmas. Other holidays were Christian in origin and introduced into the Christian calendar to fill-out the Christmas season.

The two major days of celebration (beyond Christmas) during the Twelve Days are New Year's Day and the Epiphany (January 6). New Year's Day come from the Roman calendar, where it was known as the Kalendae. The church was never too comfortable with New Year's celebrations and it established an alternative Christian day for January 1st which is the Feast of the Circumcision-or the Holy Name of Jesus. Through the Middle Ages and up to 1582, when the Gregorian reform of the calendar was promulgated, Christians celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25th) as the start of the New Year - and in England that tradition continued until 1752!

The end of the `Twelve Days of Christmas' is the Feast of the Epiphany. We associate that day with the arrival of the Wise Men from the East, but the Epiphany began in eastern Christendom not as a celebration of the concluding event of the birth of Jesus, but as a celebration of the beginning of his ministry as an adult when Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan. Only later did the Epiphany come to represent the Wise Men exclusively.

Early in the history of the church a number of holy days came to be: attached to the Twelve Days. Included among these days is the remembrance of the first Christian martyr, Stephen on December 26 (Acts 6 and7), St. John the Evangelist on December 27 and the Holy Innocents on December 28 (Matthew 2:13-18). At Christ Church we will celebrate Holy Innocents at the Thursday Eucharist (December 30) at 10:00 a.m. and on Thursday January 6, we will have celebrations of the Eucharist for the Epiphany at 10:00 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.