Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes--
Some have got broken--and carrying them up to the attic....
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it....
                                    from "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio" by W.H. Auden

There is a mistaken notion, sometimes heard, that the Epiphany is Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas or, at the very least, simply an extension of Christmas. In one sense, the two feasts are inseparable. They are indeed both part of the "Incarnation, or Christmas, cycle" of feasts, in the same way that Pascha (Easter), Ascension Day, and Pentecost are all part of the Easter cycle. Nevertheless, in both cases each day is a distinct feast celebrating distinct events with its own unique themes and emphases. The distinction between Christmas and Epiphany is particularly blurred in the West where the first day of the Epiphany season, the Feast of the Epiphany itself, celebrates the visit of the Wise Men to the Child Jesus in Bethlehem. The Gospel tells us that the Holy Family is living in a house by this time and based on the testimony of the Wise Men, King Herod determines that the infant King is about two years old, but our Christmas crèches usually depict the Magi visiting Jesus in the same stable where the shepherds found him--often the shepherds are still there--so in our minds we tend to lump Christmas and Epiphany together as one continuous feast--assuming we think of Epiphany at all! And there's the rub.

As Auden's poem suggests, more often than not, Christmas fades away and, instead of embracing Epiphany, we merely revert to "the time being," that state of affairs in which we live by routine, by the ordinary rules of nature and the obligatory patterns of waking and sleeping, going to work and school, forgetful of the miracle Child so recently remembered, forgetful of his power to touch us and change us--even in the time being. That is what Full Homely Divinity is about:  the daily practice of faith here in the time being. Not a perpetual feast, but a perpetual consciousness that in our daily lives, in the ordinary routines as well as the extraordinary feasts, Christ is manifest. As always, we welcome you to Full Homely Divinity--the website "for the Anglican at the Altar and especially for the Anglican in the pew." We invite you to check our index of What's New and Current? for a variety of seasonal resources and to explore the various resources for living the time being to the fullest.

For Epiphany resources on Full Homely Divinity, start here.

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   Website updated on 11 January 2012