{"id":32766,"date":"2021-01-02T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T08:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=32766"},"modified":"2021-01-02T00:01:33","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T08:01:33","slug":"the-wise-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-wise-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas — It Ain’t Over Till the Wise Men Show"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"three-wise-men\"<\/a>
The Three Wise Men at a Christmas drive-through<\/a> at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, California.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christmas — it ain’t over yet. It ain’t over till the Wise Men show up to pay homage to the newborn king.<\/p>\n

And that doesn’t happen till January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.<\/p>\n

Contrary to popular Nativity scenes, the Three Wise Men — or Kings, or Magi — did not arrive in Bethlehem with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh until some time after the birth of Jesus.<\/p>\n

They had followed the Christmas Star from distant lands to the East, and this had taken time<\/a>. Which means they definitely did not make it to that iconic scene at the manger.<\/p>\n

And unlike Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, the Wise Men were not Jews. Which is why some Christians celebrate Epiphany as the first time Jesus’ divinity was revealed to the Gentiles — the non-Jews.<\/p>\n

\"christmas-star-2020<\/a>
In December, sky watchers were treated to a glimpse of the Star of Bethlehem, which, tradition holds, led the Wise Men to the Holy Family. The “star” is the great conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, as they pass each other in the night sky. Last month the two planets were closer to each other than they have been since 1623. But the last time their conjunction was visible to Earthlings was during the Middle Ages — and, of course, in 7 BCE, around the time of the Wise Men’s journey toward Bethlehem. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When my children were small and I was still holding down a bona fide office job and I was feeling overworked and overextended (OK, not as overworked and overextended as parents struggling through this pandemic), I liked to take advantage of this technical detail in the Christian calendar.<\/p>\n

Christmastide — the Twelve Days of Christmas — does not end until Epiphany, I’d tell myself. It ain’t over till the Wise Men show.<\/p>\n

And so, if the holiday cards had not been signed and mailed by Christmas Eve, I figured we still had twelve more days of official Christmas before they needed to arrive in people’s mailboxes.<\/p>\n

And if I couldn’t get the Christmas tree down in time for the city Christmas tree pick-up, I’d work off my guilt by muttering, “Hey, wait a minute. Christmas isn’t over. The Wise Men haven’t even gotten here and you want me to put them back in storage?”<\/p>\n

Or maybe the Christmas cookies hadn’t gotten baked, or the Christmas carols sung. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready to take in Christmas until after Santa had come and gone and the last bit of Christmas wrap had been stuffed into the trash.<\/p>\n

Maybe I wasn’t any more ready for Christmas than those first three gentile Christians. Maybe I still had a long way to go. Maybe it would take me till Epiphany to show up.<\/p>\n

Jon is the No. 1 stargazer in our family. Our last astronomical adventure took us to Missouri for the total eclipse of the sun in 2017.\u00a0 More on that at “A Totality Disappointment.”<\/a>\u00a0 As for me, I’m more preoccupied with the star that my book, “Wrestling with God,” received from Publishers Weekly<\/a>. That was a very big deal.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"conjunction-jupiter-saturn-2020<\/a>
From a hillside looking southwest over the San Francisco Bay, my cell phone could spot the two separate planets even better than my naked eye. Jupiter, the bigger planet, is on the left. The more diminutive Saturn passed behind Jupiter<\/a> from left to right over the course of several days.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"three-wise-men\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Christmas isn’t over till the Wise Men show up. So for folks who still aren’t ready for Christmas, no problem. They’ve got till January 6.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2396,34,2397,2398,2399,2400,2401,2402],"class_list":["post-32766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-christmas-star","tag-dont-miss","tag-epiphany","tag-great-conjunction","tag-magi","tag-star-of-bethlehem","tag-three-wise-men","tag-when-is-christmas-over"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}