Making a habit out of Epiphany
Epiphanies flare up and fade. How can we keep them in our everyday vision?
On Christmas morning, after we had unwrapped our presents and feasted on sweet rolls, my daughter and her Italian girlfriend compared their families’ respective celebrations over Skype. Amanda held up her now-empty stocking to show Alessia. “Your stocking?” Alessia asked. “Don’t you have Epiphany?”
Well, sort of. But not like the Italians, for whom Epiphany is both a religious and a national holiday. In Italy, Epiphany even has its own gift giver—La Befana, an old woman who housed the Magi during their journey. They invited her to come along as they followed the star, but she declined because of all the housework she had to do. Later, she wished she had gone with them. On Epiphany Eve, she searches for the Christ Child in every child, leaving toys, candy, and carbone—sweet lumps of candy made to look like coal—in their stockings. (Not as binary a thinker as Santa Claus, apparently, La Befana recognizes that everybody’s been both bad and good!)
Epiphany doesn’t stand out sharply in my memories of the religious observances of my childhood. We sang “We Three Kings” on Christmas Eve and put the Magi side by side with the shepherds in our nativity scenes. By the time January 6 rolled around, we had taken the lights out of our windows, packed away our ornaments, and put our tree out by the curb.
