i am sparticus: Part Three: In Which We Find Out More About Epiphany Than Ever Thought Necessary

Part Three: In Which We Find Out More About Epiphany Than Ever Thought Necessary

You'd be excused for thinking at this point that we at iamsparticus.com have lost track of things a bit, after all, wasn't this series supposed to be about the origins of Christmas? Epiphany is all well and good and the such but why should we care? Christmas is what's important! Christmas and baby Jesus in a manager in swaddling^* clothes! Christmas and shepherds and wisemen from the East! Christmas and God in human form coming down to earth to save humanity. (And for the more irreligious; Christmas and food and drink and pillowcases full of presents!) Oh ye of little faith! Take heed and see that soon everything will make sense.

Up until this point Epiphany was overwhelmingly a celebration of God's manifestation on Earth. It was associated with Jesus's baptism because wrongly some people believed that Jesus became inhabited by God at the baptism. Remember back a few sections to the part about people not caring about Jesus's birth?

"...For the first 300 years people were primarily concerned with the Cross and what Christ's death and resurrection meant, his birth just wasn't seen as important... Only as the understanding of the Cross solidified did people start to look more seriously at the issue of the birth of Jesus and how that affected their beliefs. But that'll have to wait for later."

This is later, and people are starting to be concerned about how Jesus was God and how Jesus was human and how, in some way, that meant that He was both God and human. And while this is all going on, towards the start of the fourth century, Epiphany has managed to spread its way to being a festival celebrated by the Eastern European Church.

Now the Eastern European Church were a fairly sound bunch, and they fell down on the side of the Bible when it came to thinking about who Jesus was. They believed that Jesus was God at His birth and human at His birth, that He didn't just get God at his baptism. So obviously their Epiphany celebrations were slightly different, as they could hardly celebrate Jesus becoming God at His baptism, they were still celebrating God becoming manifest and so if they weren't going to be celebrating it in relation to Jesus's baptism, they were going to be celebrating it in relation to His birth. Celebrating God coming down to Earth, At. Jesus's. Birth. Three hundred or so years after Jesus is born and finally someone gets around to throwing the most famous person in the world a party. Gosh, isn't that exciting? So exciting that I think, on the note we'll have a pause.

Footnotes

* Swaddling: Clothes used to swaddle. Swaddle: wrap (someone, esp. a baby) in garments or cloth. Just so you know.

Your Comments