Epiphany

Epiphany is one of the oldest feasts in Christianity — together with Easter and Pentecost — and its name says it all: from the Greek, manifestation. It’s the day when Jesus shows himself for who he is. There’s a curious thing, though: East and West celebrate it looking at two different scenes. In the West the Magi are remembered above all, that is, the revelation to faraway peoples; in the Eastern Churches, instead, the focus is on the baptism in the Jordan, when the voice of the Father says who this son is. In the early centuries the two went together, and in certain communities of the Near East three episodes were tied to Epiphany: the Magi, the baptism and the first miracle at Cana. At the end of the second century Clement of Alexandria records that in Egypt it was already celebrated on January 6; the pilgrim Egeria tells us that in Jerusalem the feast lasted eight days. In Italy, though, January 6 has another face, and it isn’t religious: the Befana. The term is secular in origin and refers to the folk figure tied to the feast — the old woman on a broom who brings coal to children and sweets to the good ones, or maybe the other way around, depending on which grandmother is telling you. It’s one of the few holidays where the sacred and the popular live together without fighting: in the morning you go to church, in the afternoon you look inside the stocking. If you bear the name of one of the Magi — Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar — today is your day. Epiphany closes the holidays, and it knows it: it’s the day you take down the tree and go back to everyday life. But it’s also the day when, in the story, someone who came from very far away arrived at the right place.