Today we celebrated the Epiphany, the day in which the famous three wise men, or kings, or magi, brought baby Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. While I understand the theological meaning behind the chosen gifts: gold for the king, frankincense (a type of incense) for the priest and myrrh (used in burials) for his redeeming death, I still think Mary could have used diapers, wipes and a sleep sack. Maybe Joseph used the gold to buy some at the local market.
We closed our formal Christmas festivities today with a full day of Epiphany events.
To start Bean made a birthday card for Jesus and
took it to church today to lay by the manger scene we will be delivering it to Him next time we are at church. We just cut up an old Christmas card to make the birthday card, that was easy.
Then this afternoon we hosted an Epiphany party with some of our friends. There was lots of food including a crown cake which you can find instructions for at
this post. I'm still trying to figure out how to organize a blog, so I made a different post for it.
And we also did a crown craft for the kiddos, instructions at
this post.
After the party we blessed our house with the traditional Epiphany marking...
The numbers stand for the new year and the letters stand for the names of the three magi,
Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar; as well as Christus Mansionem Benedicat which means "Christ bless this house". The blessing is to keep away evil and to serve as a witness to the faith. When we were in college at Benedictine the monks would come around each year and bless the dorm rooms in this way at the beginning of the new year, so it's a tradition that is dear to us. You can get the blessing at Catholicculture.org.
The traditional feast of the Epiphany is January 6th, so you can still get in on the fun and celebrate later this week!
