Epiphany

I have a lot of catching up to do. Let's start back at January 6 -- Epiphany. I'll try to get caught up a little each day.

My family started celebrating Epiphany when my children were still young. This was not a church tradition for us and so we have made our own traditions for the holiday. We like celebrating Epiphany because it commemorates the day the Wise Men reached the Christ-child. It is important for us because it brought Gentiles into the story. The Light was brought to all man-kind.

This year our family was not together for Christmas, yet we still wanted to draw names and exchange gifts, so we decided to do so on Epiphany. Everyone was there. It was a blessed time.

We start out eating take-out Chinese food. We do so every year. It would be nice to say it symbolizes the fact that the Wise Men came from the East; but, truthfully, it was because by that time in the line of holidays, I was tired of cooking a huge festive meal!

After eating, the grown-ups clean up and the children go plan a little skit. They delight us every year as they are all absolutely adorable, of course. We often end up in tears, sometimes because of the poignancy, but usually because of laughter!

All ten of my grandbabies were here! Are they cute or what?

Then, we sit and all take turns reading excerpts from the Scriptures telling the Christmas story and the plan of salvation starting with the prophecies in the Old Testament and end with singing We Three Kings. Sometime during the night, we usually watch the movie, The Fourth Wise Man.

We then (finally!) get to open presents! This year's theme was "Books, books, books!" We had to give anything that was book related. Quite a variety of creativity showed up.

We ended our night eating Chocolate Yule Log, a definite favorite around here. And with our crowd, I had to make three!