Epiphany
First published January 8, 2006.
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light
My family isn't very much into tradition. There isn't a traditional Christmas breakfast item or a birthday plate or a weekly meal out. We never gathered round to watch a certain TV show or tell the story of the day you were born.
But we always celebrated Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas when the Wise Men arrived in Jerusalem to visit Baby Jesus.
We had this old school Christmas traditions book with stories about imps that lived in the attic, and St. Nicholas, and the Wise Men. We learned that the night before Epiphany children in other countries left our their shoes filled with hay for the Magi's camels. When they came through they would eat the hay and leave a present.
We decided to celebrate this tradition. Every year we would leave out our shoes. Sometimes we left them out the night before--January 5--but sometimes we forgot and left them out the evening of Epiphany--January 6. Either way, the Magi always found us.
They would leave Target-Dollar-Aisle fare but this was before the Target Dollar Aisle so the Magi had to search far and wide for fun, cheap gifts. This was hard for the Magi, I think, because the Magi were stressed out with job losses and recovering from Christmas and all those other things, but the Magi also always made sure we had our hay out (even if it was a day late).
What traditions does your family have?
Comments
Why won't your blog remember me?
Posted by: Sally | January 7, 2007 6:46 PM
Our tradition? Was hoping Santa would make a mistake and bring the gifts BEFORE we fell asleep on Christmas Eve. The jerk never did.
The second tradition was my parents torturing us on Christmas morning, by not allowing us to open the gifts until they've had their coffee & faces washed ... ugh, the anger it still ensues.
Posted by: Em | January 9, 2007 2:56 PM
That is so nice, especially because I'm from Mexico and we celebrate this too. Even when we moved here 10 years ago, we made a point to always leave our shoe out. Even now that my brother is married and my cousins are 21 and 18 (I'm not telling my age, but I'm way older than that) we just got together this weekend and braged about our gifts!!
Posted by: Lizzie | January 10, 2007 10:55 AM
My family and I play football for the Geller Cup. Oh wait, that's on Thanksgiving. Never mind.
Posted by: Jennie | January 10, 2007 3:58 PM