DAYS ELEVEN AND TWELVE: EVE OF EPIPHANY/FESTIVAL OF THE
THREE KINGS; AND EPIPHANY/TWELFTH NIGHT
Subtitle: The Magi, Herod the Ingrate, the Slaughtered Innocents, and the Baby Jesus In You!
Two days: one to celebrate the magi, and one the baby Jesus’
“striking appearance” (the meaning of epiphany) in the world.
The number of magi/kings/wise men/astrologers (depending on
the translation) is not clarified in the gospels, only the number of gifts. Nevertheless, legend fills in the blanks
where myth leaves off. So then there
were three, their secret identities revealed by one version in this way: Caspar,
a Turk, is old, normally with a white
beard, and gives the gold. Melchior is middle-aged, giving frankincense from
his native Arabia, and Balthazar is a young man with myrrh from Yemen, although
beginning in the 1100’s he has been depicted as a dark-skinned Ethiopian.
The canon establishes that an unknown number of Visitors on
the Eve of Epiphany followed a star Bethlehem way and visited Herod the Great,
King of Judea. They innocently believed that
the sovereign would be supportive of their quest and indeed of the Newborn King
himself. Playing dumb, but having every
intention of impaling the infant on a sword, he sweetly asked them to let him
know when they found the child so that he might pay homage himself. They never did get back to him, having been
warned by a dream not to, and left town on the sly. Herod’s response: to kill all newborn Jews, a
bloodbath earning the epitaph “the slaughter of the innocents,” and should have
changed the Judean king’s name to “Horrid the Genocidal”. But he was evidently greater in his own mind
than in reality, for the Baby Jesus escaped the others’ fate, his parents being
warned, as had been the Magi, in a dream to get the hell out of Dodge-lehem.
So obviously Herod murdered everyone’s newborns after the
magi had skipped town. Even so, their
fate is commemorated on the Third Day, Childermass, December 28th,
when it could not have been earlier than Jan. 7th.
A thought experiment: let’s say that Herod represents the
“ego”. At its worst, this part of the
psyche is a constellation of all our entrenched habits (and the ruts they are
stuck in). This part of self, a sort of
gatekeeper, really, has no or limited access to vast areas of the
soul-self. Humility, Zen, mystical
experience, true reverence, mental peace, or even any new habit may threaten
it, and in fact the ego has been known to actively thwart any such
novelties. The overblown ego thinks that
it is king, and fails to realize how small its ‘kingdom’ really is.
Further, say that the Nativity represents a breakthrough of heroic
energy: a breakthrough of spiritual and psychological Stuff which is wider,
deeper, higher and more central, all at once, than anything else experienced
before. The “innocents” whom Herod
slaughtered represent ideas, feelings and actions flowing from this new and greater
way of being. The first reaction of the
ego is Herod’s: to kill off all urges that threaten its tenure. Stab them!
Slaughter them. Or, what’s a more
likely scenario today: watch TV and hope they go away.
I had always thought that “Coventry Carol,” is hauntingly
beautiful, and that the “bye, bye” part was not a literal goodbye but some
medieval word with a different meaning. If
only: in this song, Hebrew mothers are bidding their barely-born and newly
murdered sons adieu forever….
Lully,
lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye,
lully, lullay.
Lullay,
thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye,
lully, lullay.
…It’s heart-rending.
I need not milk it, but I do propose that it’s also quite sad the number
of divine stirrings within—intuitions or feelings of big love or noble
actions—that have been ignored in a person’s life, and whose time may have come
and gone. What ideas arising from your very
core are you killing off this lovely Christmas season?—To put it another way, if
you were completely daring and secure, what would you do (or not do)?
The story says that the Source of all those anxiety
provoking promptings will not be killed, which means the ideas will keep on
coming, which means you have to engage in some compulsive behavior or other, or
they will catch up with you (‘Tis the season, traditionally, of compulsive
shopping—but why limit yourself?). Whereupon
you will realize that you-as-ego are not a king at all, more like a clerk at a
local hotel which may or may not be The Ritz.
More, if you are lucky you will
realize also that this is a very good thing, that there is more to you than the
dog tricks you have learned to perform in response to the old master, fear. Perhaps you will get that “there are more
things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
and you will see that the Wonder Child, source of all those promptings, is
constantly reborn within us where the humble meets the exalted (where angels,
for example, fly singing their hearts out over a barn full of animals and
straw, and manure).
To support this Birth within yourself, make a habit of doing
something every day that feeds your soul-self, your Newborn King (or Queen):
follow your Bliss; remain quiet and still (don’t just do something—sit there!);
feed yourself ideas that are hard to accept but are nevertheless true, like
“the Divine is born in me”; if you find yourself in a rut, leave it the same
way you would leave an unhealthy yet familiar relationship (kicking and
screaming, if you’re like me); give up a resentment; meditate on what you might
do (or not do), and see what bubbles up.
The Christmas Story would have us pay attention to our dreams; didn’t
dreams protect the Divine Child’s life, not once but twice? Of what are our dreams warning us, or what in
our lives are they asking us to feed?
UNCOMMON THOUGHTS ON GIFTS AND GIVING
We can talk theologically about what the Magi’s gold,
frankencense and myrrh represent, but let’s us just talk gifts and giving now. For one, what IS the “ideal” gift for a
certain person? What gift will help lead
a person further along on this journey called life, encouraging them to come
into their own, somehow? That, I propose, is the question.
You know what Santa Claus brought my kid this year? A pull-up bar, which is a great gift for
Asher because my monkey boy goes stir crazy all the long Winter without any
trees to climb. And now, thanks to the
irrespressible urge to leap up and grab it, he’s doing not just one but two
full pullups at a time (which is 2 more than most kids his age can do), plus hanging,
turning upside down, taking a tumble—all that good stuff. Good call by the Jolly Old Elf, but then he himself
is fond of climbing up and down chimneys.
M. Scott Peck, may he rest in peace with a pack of
Marlbloros in the coffin, insisted that love is doing (or giving, I would add here) anything
that helps someone grow spiritually. I
would put forth the proposition that Asher, in learning that he can grow
stronger through playful action, is
growing spiritually. He is finding his
own way to improve at something, or rather refining an internal way that
already has existed, which is better.
I would also have you consider that giving a great gift
means being willing to INVESTIGATE
the issue. In so doing, one uses all the
tools for coming to any other important answer: think and write and pray about
it, meditate on it, talk it over with others, pay attention to your dreams
and/or those “limbo” thoughts you have in the morning between sleep and
wakefulness, be attentive to synchronicities wherein the Gods are trying to get
your attention. Some would take a visit
to the astrologer or Madame Romani and her tarot cards. Whatever: the point is to FOCUS on the Quest, to give it your
attention, and action.
What would benefit your loved ones the most? What are their “immense needs of inner
space”*? Remember that they themselves
might not want to think about that: “…To
consider our real needs—the essential things we lack in our lives—is often too
frightening, opening up an abyss of need that calls our very existence into
question.”*. The gift you end up “giving”
may not be in a wrapped box, it may be simply your presence, or a party, a nice
massage, a change of scenery, a story that you memorize and tell them, an idea
whose time has come—the sky really is the limit when the gift is from the best
part of the giver to the best part of the receiver. Ironically, gift giving time is a great one
for thinking “out of the box”.
What you are looking for, in deciding on gifts, is an
“epiphany”. I use the term in the wider
sense of a sudden, striking insight, in this case a glimpse into the essence of
the person to whom you would like to give a gift (as Santa looked into Asher
and saw “Monkey!...Athlete”). When life is getting my wife down to the
point where she can’t get back up, if I am in my right mind I see that she
should not even try to get up; she should stay down—and by that I mean lying
down with me massaging her. Since having
that epiphany once after many unsuccessful attempts to “cheer her up,”, I know
what to do. Works every time. I’ve even bought myself (I mean, her) a
massage table.
The point is not just knowledge of the right gift. In undergoing the systematic use of all your
personal tools for revelation, you are also uncovering the best part of
yourself—which, naturally, is the ideal part to be deciding what gifts to
provide to others. Who isn’t a better
person herself after meditating on and actively pursuing the gift that would
benefit another person the most?
Especially if my suspicion is true: that the very best gifts involve the
element of personal sacrifice on the part of the giver.
One thing that might be happily sacrificed is one’s own
limitations, which might well be based on one’s own relatively low opinion of
oneself. It has been said that one can
receive only that which one can accept.
If you truly believe that you get what you desereve—and deserve very little,
at that, for whatever reason—then it makes sense that subconsciously you will
avoid any greater good because you would be uncomfortable with the having of
it. It’s one thing to be frugal in the
interest of humility, or the clarity that comes without the clutter of stuff,
or a concern to remain small in ecological footprint; but it’s quite another to
be constricted out of a sense of unworthiness.
Here I should amplify the concept of “gifts” that one might receive to
include some more internal in nature:
peace, love, faith, the ability to freely express joy and grief,
acceptance, determination. So it may be
that someone does not feel they deserve or can afford a nicer house, or it may
also be that they do not feel they deserve or can afford peace of mind.
I say all this because I suspect that our own small-mindedness,
the result of seeing all through the tightened aperture of a weak self-image or
imagination, cannot help but restrict as well the quality of our Quest to find
the Perfect Gift for our beloveds.
Remember Parsifal, the naïve knight who, when presented with the whole
shabang—the wounded Fisher King, the Grail Castle, and even the Holy Grail
itself—made it all disappear even though all he had to do was ask one little
question. He’d failed to ask it because
someone had taught him it was rude to ask questions—and as much because he didn’t
know he was up to the task of breaking a rule meant for small situations for
the sake of a much greater one†.
By
contrast, in the fairy tale “The Devil’s Sooty Brother,” the title character spends
seven years without bathing sweeping the ashes and feeding the fires in
hell. As a result, he looks awful,
covered with soot and funk and shunned by others. Even so, the Devil instructs him to say, if
anyone should ask his identity, “I am the devil’s sooty brother, and my king as
well!” He goes on to win the king’s
daughter and kingdom**. Parcifal was all
decked out in a knight’s armored splendor, but failed thanks to seeing himself
as a sort of pawn without the right to speak; the sooty brother saw himself as
a king and ended up one rich in “gold” (symbolizing wholeness and connection to
the Divine).
So have the epiphany: you are a king, a queen—at the very
least master of yourself by divine birthright. January 6th, the
Feast of the Epiphany, can be seen as the world’s having its “sudden, striking
insight”: far from forsaking us, the
Divine is among us, even in us. There’s
an epiphany for you.
Here’s an idea whose time has come: take a break from the
rat race and make a list of your own needs, and the needs of the people on your
X-mas list. This is one way to mind what
Lillie Tomlin said about the rat race: “Even if you win, you’re still a rat.”. Now, give yourself, and them, one thing from
the lists made. Don’t stop: since
Christmas (so sayeth the clergy) should last throughout the year, make this a
habit!
TWELFTH NIGHT CUSTOMS, AND WHERE HAVE ALL THE PARTIES GONE?
As for Twelfth Night customs, I can tell you what happens in
Spain and other places in the present day: January 6th is when the
kids get their Christmas presents, not Christmas Day, and they are brought by
the Three Kings, not by the roly-poly Man In Red. The kids know all of the “Wise Kings’” names
and faces. I believe the children fill
their shoes with straw and leave them out for the Kings’ camels, exactly the
way the Old Norse would leave straw out for Sleipnir, Odin The All-Father’s flying
eight-legged horse, or the way we leave cookies and milk for Santa Claus and
his flying eight reindeer. As in some
other places, the Spanish make an Epiphany cake, into which they bake a small
figure or plastic toy, or a bean.
Whoever gets the piece with the bean/toy is declared King, and gets to
preside over the festivities. In merry
Old England, the King/Queen had the honor of leading all attending the Twelfth
Night party in songs and games.
In Spain today, controversy has ensued over the recent
inclusion of Santa Claus (Papá Noel) in
their pantheon, as evidenced by an article forwarded to me by a native Spaniard
urging his nation to reject The Man With The Bag and retain the Three Kings as
the bringers of gifts and bearers of Spanish culture. We shall see how that turns out.
I’m glad I don’t live in Bulgaria. There they throw a crucifix into an icy cold
river, and the first one to fish it out receives a special blessing (and good
health for the family, they say). But
even if you avoid volunteering for polar
diving, you might be one of the men dancing in the same freezing waters to
inaugurate the crucifix ritual.
In the British Isles of yore, Twelfth Night parties are when
people pulled out all the stops for one last, grand hurrah….That is, after they
had disposed of all the Christmas decorations.
Wreaths and holly garlands, the mistletoe were consigned to the fire—any
holly spine left unburnt would turn into a goblin! During the subsequent festivities, “All the
world are Kings and Queens. Everybody is
somebody else; and learns at once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters
different from his own by enacting them—all conspires to throw a giddy
splendour over the last night of the season.”.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
The most festive thing I and my lil' fambly did was watch the birds at
the bird feeders (finches and cardinals—lots of red!). I shovelled snow in the head-cracking
cold. We ate dinner and hung out, I with
my family and my family with my headache.
You can guess that I wasn’t very good company. Katrina did make some delicious bread to eat
with our leftovers, but it was all pretty mellow. I didn’t even think about the Three Kings
until I sat down to write this…
Have you read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book about the history of
communal celebration (Dancing in the
Streets: A History of Collective Joy)?
You must! The gist of this book:
through the history of our ‘civilization,’ the amount of time devoted to
revelry has been whittled down to a sliver, and the nature of our carousing has
toned way down as well. People used to,
as Eddie Murphy sang “party all the time”.
I read somewhere that the Romans had 175
festival days a year. At one time,
even churches lacked bolted-down benches and were often used as party halls,
with dancing and singing. Imagine! This was in the days before the joke: “Why
don’t Christians have sex standing up?—Because it might lead to dancing.”. You couldn’t have gotten a laugh with that
one before the Puritans—because nobody had thought to prohibit dancing yet, and
full-throated merriment was still OK in God’s eyes.
I guess my point is, in this case as in many others, I’m all
for turning back the clock and extending our celebrations, making them merrier
and more meaningful. This is why I love
the Twelve Days of Christmas (really fourteen counting Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day—and you have to--fifteen if you put "St. Distaff's Day" after the Twelve Days have ended, where it belongs; sixteen if you also put the Slaughter of the Innocents in its logical place after the departure of the Magi--Jan. 7th or after). Even if
I don’t have a bunch of Old English friends with which to carry on for these
two weeks, the Twelve Days do give me more chance to reflect, and they have given me at
least more opportunities to celebrate with my American friends and family. I hope in the future they give me even more. So I'll edit Scrooge's nephew Fred's quote to, "though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my
pocket, I believe that the Twelve Days of Christmas have done me good, and will do me good; and I
say, God bless them!”††.
What’s else, I hope that you, reader,
faithful and tireless (which you certainly are, if you have read all my twelve
days’ worth of posts), are there to celebrate with me.
* https://shirleytwofeathers.com/The_Blog/widdershins/2017/11/
† Perceval, the Story of the Grail (French: Le Conte du Graal), 12th century romance by Chrétien de Troyes
†† A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (again, pick your edition)
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