The 12 Days

And so today marks the twelfth day of Christmas. We began on Christmas Day and opened a gift of some sort each day. Whether a family gift or an experience, the goal was to celebrate, slowly, intentionally and joyfully. 

At one point years ago, I found myself completely over the chaos of Christmas morning. Jesus can get lost in the flurry and that's the last thing we wanted. We decided to do something different and we have enjoyed the twelve days ever since. 

The goal is to keep a reasonable budget and each year we include some days where the gift is one we give. At some point each day, we read from our beautiful book "The 12 Days of Christmas" about the significance of each gift in the song, then we sing it and we always belt out the "5 golden rings"! Following the song, the gift is given. We have a ball with this and each year it looks a little different. We will celebrate Epiphany tomorrow and the Christmas tree will come down and all of the celebrations will be over until next year.

We've enjoyed every gift and every day and we will do this as long as it makes sense for our family. It's made the holidays feel like a season of savoring and enjoying and slowing down. And this is exactly what we wanted. 

Epiphany

Epiphany, observed on January 6th, is traditionally the holiday that marks the visit of the Magi to the Christ child, and corresponds with the 12th day of Christmas. (Quick background for celebrating Epiphany can be found here.)  While most of us are usually very holiday-ed out by this point, our family has found it to still be a special day, and a way to continue to "spread out" the celebrations.

Knowing that I am usually quite sick of wrapping paper and even sugar by the time Epiphany rolls around, though, we have developed some simple and easy traditions that still mark the day as important, but are not overly taxing.

Here are  the ways we have observed Epiphany over the years.  Sometimes we do these just as a family, and sometimes we have friends or extended family join in.

1.) Gifts:  We choose to keep gift-giving more simplified and extended by giving our kids their stockings from St. Nicholas on December 6th and a couple of gifts on Christmas Day.  Then we save the gifts that our children buy for each other for Epiphany.  This has worked out well for a few reasons:  1.)  Instead of getting lost among the other gifts on Christmas Day, the kids have time and ability to better appreciate what they are giving and receiving from each other, 2.) They can shop for these gifts during the after-Christmas sales :) and 3.) The joy gets stretched out for a whole month!

2.) Traditions:  "Chalking the door" is a tradition for Epiphany that has origins going back many centuries.  The common practice is to write the year, with the letters "C+M+B" in the middle. (So this year, we will write 20 C+M+B 15.) The letters have stood for the first names of the legendary wise men (Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar) and also the Latin words, Christus mansionem benedicat,  which translates as "Christ bless this house."  Our kids have always thought we were weird to do this, but a couple of years ago when we were traveling through Germany and Austria we saw these markings on all kinds of doors!  They were excited to see this is a tradition practiced in many cultures.

To go along with the idea of "revelation" (which is what the word Epiphany means), we have also incorporated a tradition of doing some sort of scavenger hunt or treasure hunt.  Before our kids were old enough to purchase gifts for one another, we used to buy them one group gift.  In order to find it they had to follow the clues throughout the house.

We leave out our nativity set through Epiphany so we can have the wise men arrive on this day.

3. Special Foods:  In Celebrating the Christian Year, Zimmerman suggests making a treasure box cake.  We've adapted this a little differently each year, depending on my energy level and ingredients on-hand.  Inside the cake we hide a toothpick wrapped in foil.  Whoever gets the piece with the toothpick now was the "baton," and can determine either what song we sing or what activity we do that night (game, book, etc.).

On some years, again depending on energy level and on-hand ingredients, we may have Middle-Eastern foods for dinner, as a reminder that the Magi were from the East.

Finally, a good song to sing on Epiphany is "We Three Kings." 



We hope and pray that our activities, words, and thoughts of the day turn our hearts, and the hearts of those around us, to Jesus, and that He is revealed in greater ways.  As the wise men were amazed and worshipped the Child, we, too, want to be overwhelmed again by how great He is!