Before the Christmas Eve children’s service, Gord led us in the singing of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Contrary to a popular myth, the song is less likely to have originated as a secret Christian code than as a medieval memory-game song. It represents feasting on familiar birds, such as partridges, hens, geese, and swans, as well as “colly birds,” “leaping lords,” and “milking maids”—now forgotten terms that may once have referred to blackbirds, herons, and egrets. Even without hidden meanings, songs like this could serve as scaffolding for teaching catechism through rhythm and repetition¹. Today, however, more than anything else, the song invites us to inhabit Christmas for a little while, rather than feeling as though it is over almost as soon as it arrives.

So we count the Twelve Days of Christmastide from December 25 inclusively, making tomorrow, January 5, the twelfth day, and its evening—that famous Twelfth Night which marks the last moments of revelry and lends its name to one of Shakespeare’s plays. Epiphany itself falls on January 6, not as the final day of Christmas, but as the first day of the season that dawns after it.

Originally, the Nativity of Christ, the visit of the Magi—kings, astrologers, or wise men—and the Baptism of Christ were marked as a single feast, teaching complementary aspects of God’s presence in the world in human form. Over time, these observances diverged. While every Christian tradition celebrates Christmas, the feast that comes twelve days later differs. In the Orthodox calendar, what remains central is the Baptism of Christ, called Theophany. It teaches us that God is not only incarnate but also Trinitarian: the Son in the water, the Spirit in the sky, and the Father as the voice. In Western Christianity, however, the visit of the Magi takes centre stage, representing the conviction that non-Jewish people are invited to worship the God originally worshiped by Israel—what St. Paul will later articulate when he insists that “in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile” (Galatians 3:28).

Notice, though, that last Sunday we already read the unfortunate Act Two of the Magi’s story and remembered the Holy Innocents—the Bethlehem children killed by Herod the Great, who sought to eliminate Jesus along with them when he learned of the child’s birth from these very wise men. We are reading these stories out of order both for liturgical reasons—because in the Anglican calendar the Baptism of Christ comes next Sunday—and because this ordering provides a necessary counterweight to the sentimentality of Christmas. Even the gifts of the Magi are unsettling: gold speaks of kingship and political threat; frankincense gestures toward divinity and mystery; myrrh carries the unmistakable scent of death and burial. As such, Holy Innocents’ Day stands as the dark echo of the Nativity, and Magi’s visit points us to Good Friday: the shadow of the cross is present not only at the manger, but at every child’s cradle.

On a lighter note, our gift-giving is now over, but in Spain and Latin America, it is on Epiphany that children will receive gifts and candy, and share a ring-shaped cake concealing a small king figurine. In France, a similar cake appoints a “king” or “queen” for the day, playfully overturning hierarchies—much like the English tradition of appointing a boy bishop on St. Nicholas’ Day. In Germany, homes are marked with chalk as a visible prayer for Christ’s blessing, a practice we observe here at St. Timothy’s as well. This year, we will write above our front door “20 C + M + B 26,” standing both for Christus Mansionem Benedicat—“Christ bless this house”—and for Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, the traditional names of the Magi, bracketed by 2026. And on the Orthodox equivalent of the Twelfth Night, the Eve of the Baptism of the Lord (January 18th on the older, Julian calendar), Russian traditions will blend Christian rituals with fortune-telling primarily focused on predicting marriage, using practices such as wax pouring, mirror gazing, throwing shoes out windows, and reading tea leaves or coffee grounds, all reflecting deep-rooted Slavic folklore. 

As a church holiday, then, Epiphany names specifically the Western Christian feast that follows the twelfth night of Christmastide and remembers the Magi’s visit. But as a theological concept, it is wider and older. It stems from the mythology of ancient Greece, where epiphaneia meant a “showing forth from above” and named moments when gods revealed their presence to mortals in various forms—human or animal, dream or vision, insight or inspiration. These encounters occurred in moments of crisis or dire need, longing, or fear, and were understood as interventions in human affairs. Sometimes the god was recognized immediately through light, beauty, or power; and sometimes only in hindsight. These gods were not always benevolent, often pursuing their own interests, as when Zeus visited Europa as a bull or Leda as a swan. At other times, they did offer guidance, as in Themistocles’ dream from the Mother of the Gods, who warned him of an attempt on his life—a story that resonates with Joseph’s dream to flee with Jesus to Egypt. Or, on the eve of the Battle of Marathon, Pheidippides—the runner whose legend later gave us this race distance—is said to have met the god Pan, who promised the Athenians aid against the Persians.

Biblical epiphanies are likewise moments of divine self-revelation, but they are also occasions when God calls people to himself. In the New Testament, epiphanies centre on Jesus as the ultimate self-revelation of God: first recognized by Jewish shepherds, then by foreign Magi—outsiders and astrologers from another religious world—then by those present at his baptism, and finally by the disciples who hear the voice and see the light on the mountain at the Transfiguration. Yet epiphanies also appear throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, involving both Israelites and outsiders alike. 

Think of the first Jew, Abraham, welcoming strangers by the oaks of Mamre; or Moses encountering God in the burning bush, on Mount Sinai, and in the cleft of a rock; and Elijah discovering God in sheer silence. To this we add Psalm 72, which imagines a day when foreigners, “the kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall bring gifts” (72:10). Tarshish lay to the west, possibly in Spain, and Sheba to the south or east. Together they represented the edges of the known world—the biblical equivalent of saying “the entire world and all its people.” Isaiah too, speaks of a multitude of camels that “from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord” (Isaiah 60:6). In due time, Simeon will take the forty-day-old Jesus in his arms in the Jerusalem Temple and name this widening hope explicitly as the child who will be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). All of this is to say that in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, God does not abandon Israel in order to include the world, but meets her in covenant and then, through her, meets the nations.

However, over time, the word epiphany has also come to describe personal moments of sudden clarity or insight. In psychology, it names a shift in understanding, when something long suppressed comes into awareness. In science, we love stories of Archimedes in his bath, Newton beneath an apple tree, Einstein on a streetcar in Bern watching a clock tower recede. Yet we know that these “sudden” discoveries come only as the fruit of years of attention, discipline, failure, and perseverance. Notice again the mountain motif in both the Old and New Testaments, just as the encounter between Pan and the Marathon runner took place on Mount Parthenion. One must climb the mountain to meet God—but God, too, must choose to appear. Yet epiphanies are not purely transactional. Neither the kings of Tarshish and Sheba nor the Magi bring gifts to secure favour. Instead, they respond with devotion to a realization of where true power lies, and—because they already hold earthly authority—to their responsibility in furthering God’s reign of justice and care. They offer what they have, and then, warned in a dream, they return home by another road, changed and redirected.

That may be the quiet invitation of Epiphany for us as well. Prayer, attention, moral effort, and patience do not purchase God’s self-disclosure, but they are necessary to notice it when it does happen. Have you ever experienced a moment of clarity that felt like a gift? Did it arrive suddenly, or after a long season of searching? What are you carrying toward God now—not as currency or in exchange, but simply as offering? Epiphany does not conclude the Christmas story; it opens it outward. It reminds us that God continually reveals Godself. Maybe it is in stars, maybe in sacraments, insight, or dreams. Sometimes it happens slowly, sometimes all at once. And when that light appears, if it shows us something new about what is familiar, or makes us more aware of something we have sensed all along, or reminds us where we truly belong—then we know we have had an epiphany!

1. 
   We can use the song to memorize the following concepts:
   1 Partridge in a Pear Tree: one Lord, Jesus Christ.
   2 Turtle Doves: The Old and New Testaments.
   3 French Hens: The three Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, Charity) or the Holy Trinity, or the three Magi (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar) and their gifts (gold, frankincense, myrrh).
   4 Calling Birds: The Four Gospels/Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John).
   5 Golden Rings: The first five books of the Bible/“of Moses” (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy).
   6 Geese a-Laying: The Six Days of Creation.
   7 Swans a-Swimming: The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit or the Seven Sacraments.
   8 Maids a-Milking: The Eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10).
   9 Ladies Dancing: The Nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).
   10 Lords a-Leaping: The Ten Commandments.
   11 Pipers Piping: The Eleven Faithful Apostles (after Judas’ betrayal).
   12 Drummers Drumming: The Twelve Points of the Apostles’ Creed or the Twelve Tribes of Israel/Apostles. ↩︎