Here’s Why You Should Celebrate an Epiphany Festival
Anglicans often speak of the tradition of the 12 Days of Christmas, emphasizing that the holiday is not merely one day but an extended season. The season spans from December 25 (or the evening of December 24) through January 5 and includes several nativity-oriented feast days, as well as separate saints’ days. Many families and parishes already have their own devotional, liturgical, and celebratory practices to enter the season of Christmastide.
However, as a broader cultural tradition, the 12 days of Christmas have long fallen out of fashion and currently have little traction in people’s minds as a way to celebrate Christ’s birth. Many people even think the 12 days occur in the lead-up to December 25, that is, from December 14 onward! How, then, might we compel people in our communities—both the churched and unchurched alike—to adopt what is, for them, an entirely new way of doing Christmas (though it is actually quite old)?
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A Crucial Task
The crucial task before us is to establish in people’s hearts and minds compelling enough traditions that they begin to yearn for them, year after year, to such an extent that their Christmases feel empty without them. It only does so much to tell people that the 12 days are about entering into the story of Jesus’s birth and celebrating other saints’ days. Instead, our challenge will be to both tell of Christ’s coming while also giving people memorable activities to do.
Tent Posts of the Season
One way to accomplish this is to firmly establish in people’s minds the two “tent posts” of the season, Christmas Day (Dec. 25) and Epiphany (Jan. 6). It will be essential to emphasize that the season not only opens with Christ’s birth but also culminates with the magi’s arrival on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. Though the day would technically fall on the 13th day of Christmas and have us entering into the next season of Epiphanytide, the initial coming of the Son of God finds a powerful fulfillment with the journey of the Wise Men who came before Jesus, presented him with their gifts, worshipped him, and proclaimed him King. On Epiphany, we learn that Jesus, the Anointed One, came to be Savior for the whole world.
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
John 1:29
Epiphany In History
In the early church, January 6 came to be one of the more commonly held dates for Christ’s birth. It was initially paired with his baptism by John, as he “was about thirty years” old at the time, according to Luke 3:23. The same day also commemorated Jesus’s first miracle at the wedding in Cana and the feeding of the 5,000. Calling it Theophany, Eastern Orthodox churches still celebrate Jesus’s baptism on January 6 rather than the Wise Men’s arrival. Most Protestant churches, however, celebrate his baptism on the Sunday after Epiphany.
Somewhat confusingly, January 6 was once “old Christmas.” That name comes from the 16th–18th centuries, when many European countries progressively changed from the older Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar to fix errors in our calculations of the Earth’s orbit. When adopted in England in 1752, many people protested the calendar for years to come, as the old date of Christmas very literally fell on what had then become January 6.
Establishing An Epiphany Festival
Many kinds of celebrations were associated with Twelfth Night (January 5) and Epiphany. However, the traditions that will take the deepest root in our communities are the ones we can adapt to a modern context. I propose to create a grand Epiphany festival that could become a community-wide event. While this idea can certainly be scaled down for the home, similar to a large birthday party, a festival will work best in a church or school setting.
The Epiphany festival can occur over the course of one evening or an evening and the following day. Two prominent examples for a two-day event would be January 5 and 6, or the Saturday evening and Sunday morning closest to the feast, when the church gathers for worship anyway. The festival will include four potential main events, adaptable to the context of individual communities:
- a carnival or game night,
- a nativity play,
- an Epiphany Mass or liturgy,
- and a bonfire where people can come to burn their Christmas trees.
Since this is a relatively major event to plan for, it will be important to intentionally make your Christmas Eve or Day gatherings more low-maintenance and about worship, singing, and reading the Scriptures together. Do not burn yourselves out during the season. If an Epiphany festival catches on, people will begin to see Christmas Day as more worship-oriented, with us then retreating to our homes to be with family, and Epiphany as the time for more jubilant public celebration.
Singing Songs, Giving Gifts, Epiphanytide Celebrations
Beginning with the carnival, people can come and play any manner of large communal games, traditional Twelfth Night games, board games, or rented carnival games and inflatables. It is also customary to bake an Epiphany or Three Kings cake, inside of which is hidden a small object. The objects are typically a bean, coins, figurines of the gifts given to Jesus, or figurines of the Wise Men themselves. Whoever finds the bean then becomes the king or queen of Epiphany.
For your festival, you would need to choose if you will have one king or queen, both a king and a queen, or some other variation and quantity. From there, you can decide which privileges the newly christened monarchs have, which could include sitting on a throne, issuing commands to others (which could become problematic), receiving a prize, or the honor of handing out gifts to the children at the festival.
Alternatively, many cultures have their primary gift exchanges on Epiphany. Often it is the Wise Men who are the gift-bringers, which means you could have three people dressed as the magi (going with the traditional number) who travel around the festival giving out small gift bags to children.
Concluding in an Epiphanytide Worship Service
If you hold your festival all in one night, you could then transition into worship with the prescribed Epiphany liturgy and accompanying Scripture readings. A few Epiphany-themed carols and hymns you can sing include “We Three Kings” and “What Child is This?” Other examples include “The First Noel,” “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” and “When Christ’s Appearing Was Made Known.”
One component of your festival that will be distinctive in your community (if you choose to include one) is to hold off on having any Nativity play until Epiphany. You could even decide to call it a Christmas-and-Epiphany play when you promote it. As a church that follows the 12 days of Christmas, it will be essential to paint a larger picture for people, emphasizing that Christ’s birth and the Wise Men’s journey and visit were a series of events that unfolded over time.
Celebrating The Full 12 Days
This last point requires some backing up. A further way to demonstrate how to celebrate the 12 days, capped with your Epiphany festival, is to consider also holding events on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28, the 4th day of Christmas) and the Feast of the Holy Name or Feast of the Circumcision (January 1, the 8th day of Christmas).
Much like Palm Sunday and Holy Week spread out the story of Christ’s passion in the lead-up to his resurrection, celebrating the different feast days of Christmas creates an immersive experience for people. Whether your events are child-focused, teaching-focused, celebratory, worshipful, or a combination of them all, by meeting together on the other feast days, you can give people the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage of sorts with the Holy Family during Jesus’s infancy.
Stations of Nativity and Stations of the Cross
One final way to offer this kind of experience to people is to develop a Stations of the Nativity, which parallels the Stations of the Cross, and for which there are many resources available, including readings, prayers, and appropriate Scripture passages. For example, commission art from a local artist and set it up in a proper place in your building.
Moving back to the Epiphany festival, the night can conclude with a natural Christmas tree bonfire. Possible locations are the church or school premises with your town’s approval, or out in the country on someone’s property that is large enough for a fire. There are many Christmas, New Year, and Epiphany traditions across cultures that prominently feature elaborate light displays or people processioning around their towns carrying various forms of lights and fires.
Though these traditions are ancient, Christians have come to associate them with Jesus, the Light of the World, who became flesh and dwelt among us. For families who choose to intentionally take down their Christmas decorations at Epiphany (a practice you might want to encourage community-wide), a bonfire offers a communal opportunity to gather their Christmas trees in one place and boldly light up the night together!
Inviting People to the Feast
Numerous other Epiphanytide traditions exist, such as house blessings and marking our doorways. Creating a concentrated event like the one described above will resonate in your community. “Aren’t we going to do that festival again?” they will ask. “It wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t end it the right way!”
The intention behind a festival is to strike a balance between the traditions we introduce to people and our prayer and worship by creatively combining celebratory parties. Next, we will need to be mindful of the time we require of people, choosing to hold the festival either over a single evening or as a manageable two-day event.
It will be a challenge to shift our culture’s timeline and Christmas paradigm. However, if we can infuse our holidays with both the joy and reverence of Christ’s coming as well as a whole lot of celebratory fun, perhaps more and more people will want to join us on our yearly journey to come and worship Jesus, the true King and Light of the World.
Note: This article was adapted from sections of Chris’s book, Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas: A Guide for Churches and Families.
Featured image: Bonfire On The Beach, by Paul VanDerWerf via Flickr. Creative Commons.
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