2015 Epiphany "Season" For Our House

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Wait?  You may be thinking you have heard of the feast of the Epiphany as just a day and not a season, unlike Christmas, which is really a season and not a day.  Did ya get all that? 

Well, you are right!  The feast of the Epiphany is celebrated as a day, but in our house we extended the celebration into a 4 day "season".  More explanation below.

This past Sunday, January 4, the Epiphany was celebrated in the Catholic Church.  The traditional date of Epiphany is January 6, but in the United States it is celebrated on the Sunday between January 2 and January 8.  It's a little confusing and it's one reason why we had an Epiphany "season" at our house.

On Sunday we started celebrating Epiphany as the Wandering Wise Men finally found Baby Jesus!  I also made a King Cake for breakfast and you can find the recipe HERE.   A King Cake is similar to a Twelfth Night Cake as explained HERE. 

One tradition of the King Cake is to hide a ring/coin/Baby Jesus in the cake and the person who finds the piece with the trinket gets a big hug from Dad and Mom (I made that part up because our 7 year old found the piece with Baby Jesus and a hug was her reward :) )

We were also FINALLY able to attend Mass together on Epiphany Sunday as a family since our Christmas was filled with festivities and fevers which only allowed our healthy family members to attend Masses over the Christmas break.  


On Tuesday, January 6, the actual Epiphany feast day on the liturgical calendar, we spent some time during our homeschool day to make these 3 Kings Ornament craft that was part of the Printable Advent Saints pack from Lacy's blog at Catholic Icing.

Then today, Wednesday, January 7,  my husband was home for lunch and I forgot to do the blessing of the home and household Epiphany prayers yesterday, so we said the blessing today at lunch time.

We said the Blessing of the Home and Household on Epiphany and used chalk (I forgot to have our chalk blessed by our priest on Sunday) to write 20 + C + M + B + 15.  On the Epiphany it's traditional to ask God's blessing on our homes.  The current year and the initials C, M, B are marked above the main doorway.  However, we just mark a black piece of cardstock and tape it to the back of our door inside our home and leave it up all year.

There are two explanations for the three initials:  Christus Mansionem Benedicat, which means, "May Christ bless this home."  These are also the initails of the legendary Magi (Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar).  While placing this blessing above the doorway of our home we said:

"May all who come to our home this year rejoice to find Christ living among us; and may we seek and serve Christ in everyone we meet.  Amen."

We ended our Epiphany "season"  tonight by reading Small Camel Follows the Star and The Last Straw.   Our family really enjoyed these two books about the adventures of the camels that carried gifts for Baby Jesus.  (I refer to Epiphany this year as a season for our family since we spread out the celebration since Sunday)

We usually have an annual Epiphany party with our homeschool group like last year, but this year due to fevers and coughs for several of our families, we canceled our usual celebration.  But, hopefully next year we can pick up the tradition once again and celebrate the Epiphany with our homeschool group!

And finally to conclude our Epiphany 2015 for our family, I thought I would share this drawing by my 7 year old daughter of the Holy Family:  Jesus is in Mary's womb with Saint Joseph.  She drew this today during our homeschool lessons.  Her beautiful drawing blessed my day more than she knows.

I hope you are having a blessed week!

  

This post is linked to Catholic Inspired Wandering Wise Men Link-Up   

This post is also linked to Twelve Days of Christmas Instagram Recap @ Shower of Roses