I figured it was the season for some holiday factoids. =)
The Christmas season is about much more than a day: it is about celebrating the miracle and life of Christ. Just as we have the Advent Calendar to count up to Christmas Day, so we also have the Twelve Days, which follow Christmas and lead up to the Epiphany.
Surviving mainly in Europe today, the Epiphany is a long-celebrated day that remembers the arrival of the Magi. Literally “Manifestation,” the Epiphany is also the day taken to commemorate the second birth or baptism of Christ and the importance of God being made man through that act.
A couple years ago, I made up what I called Epiphany Boxes for my family, though more accurately they were 12 Days of Christmas boxes. I made gifts for each day, enough for the whole family, appealing to Christmas traditions. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll share some of them on Wednesdays. =)
I’ll start today with The Christmas Star, for which I gave a star ornament for the tree.
The Christmas Star is one of the most questioned and most miraculous signs that accompanied the arrival of the Lord. It is this star that led the Magi to Bethlehem, this star that shone with a wondrous light to announce Him to the world. What was it? That is something that scholars and astronomers have been trying to discover for millennia.
Some say it is a miracle akin to the Pillar of Fire that God used to lead Israel out of Egypt. Others hold that it was a cosmic event such as a comet or super-nova. Still others hold it was an actual star and focus on the claim that it came to a halt over Bethlehem, which indicates it must be either the sun or Venus, the two “wandering stars” that halt in their paths.
Interestingly, that’s actually one of the reasons we celebrate Christmas on 25 December. The sun does “halt” on its north-south progression for three days, twice a year, on the solstices. During the time of Christ’s birth, the winter solstice was 25 December.
Today, we tend to look on the arrival of a star to herald Christ as either miraculous or just plain crazy. But it’s interesting to note that at the time of Christ, every great man was thought to be accompanied by a star when he was born. Similar cosmic events have been recorded for Alexander the Great, Abraham, and Saint Augustine. So for His followers, it wasn’t odd that a star appeared for him—it would have been odd had one not.
(If anyone wanted a doc with the script I used for the gifts and full descriptions of the presents to use as ideas for your own boxes, I’d be happy to email it to you!)
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
Thanks, Patti! I love to reflect on some of those sons I've sung every year too. Amazing messages is many of them!
Love this blog! Fun, as a new old lady blogger, to snippet somethingi cool here, something cool there…
This Christmas I've begun singing carols in that quiet time with just me and the Lord. Already I have shed past burdens, which didn't add much to the season at all…
Twelve days saturated with His holiness and wonder would change the world!!1
Patti
pattilacy.com/blog
Gee, Kimberly, that wasn't on the website I was reading a few years ago! LOL. Very cool. I love how it all ties together too. =)
See you in two days!!
It is my understanding that the Feast of the Conception of John the Baptist is the starting point for determining the date of Christmas. In Luke 1:8-10 Zachariah enters the sanctuary to burn incense probably for feast of Yom Kippur which usually falls between mid-September and mid-October.Since the fifth century the date of the Feast of the Conception of John the Baptist has been held to be Septeber 23rd. Six months later the Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th (Luke 1:36), and nine months later, on December 25th the Church celebrates the Feast of the Nativity, or Christams Day. I love how this ties Christian Tradition to Jewish tradition.
Anyhow, I love your idea to do 12 days of Christmas. I have never gotten it together to do that. Maybe someday . . .
Kimberly
Happy to educate you, Stephanie. =) And the boxes are relatively easy, because you can do them for EVERYONE, in family groups. So it's not as much shopping as it sounds like, and turned out inexpensive. (At least with the gifts I chose, LOL.)
Stay tuned for more factoids about the holidays you probably don't know. 😉
What a cool idea! I'm totally stealing that … in ten years or so when all the kiddos are in school. 🙂
And I didn't know that's why we celebrate on the 25th of December. What a great education I'm getting this afternoon!
I'd love a copy, Roseanna!