Happy Epiphany! This holiday, also known variously as “Three Kings Day”, “Little Christmas”, and “Theophany,” celebrates the revelation of Christ to the gentiles. In ancient Christian tradition, Christmas has 12 days, starting upon December 25th when Mithras–I mean Jesus!–was born and ending when the wise men arrive to present their gifts and acknowledge Christ as king of Earth. Observed on January 6th, it also brings an end to the joyous Christmas season (which reminds me, I need to take down my tree this weekend…sigh). If you live your life in accordance with liturgical colors (which I find hard to imagine you doing unless you are the pope), January 6th marks the return to ordinary green.
When I was growing up, I always liked the three wise men, who seemed like cosmopolitan outsiders in the somewhat insular & Jewish world of the synaptic gospels. Plus I always played Melchior in Christmas pageants (with exotic orientalist “robes” and an inlaid mother-of-pearl jewelry box from my mother’s vanity table!
Anyway, to properly celebrate this holiday-which-ends-the-holidays, here is a favorite artistic interpretation of the momentous visit by Flemish genius, Jan Gossaert. The painting has a sort of “find-these 30 hidden objects” quality to it (which is something I love about Flemish art), so it is worth really looking at it for a while. You might want to head over to the National Gallery’s website where you can really blow up the image to see the incredible details in every inch of the masterwork.
The kings’ names (Balthasar, Caspar, Melchior) are not found in the Bible. In fact in the gospels they are not even kings but “wise men.” Apparently their name and rank came from 5th century AD Greek texts. Interestingly it was the venerable Bede (an 8th century Northumbrian monk) who first wrote of Balthasar being black! The kings’ diverse ethnicity later became their signature feature during the Renaissance (when Gossaert was painting) as the age of exploration brought newfound fascination with ethnology.
ferrebeekeeper 
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January 7, 2022 at 12:30 AM
K Hindall
I never got the Balthasar-being-“black” thing. The three kings came from the East, and Africa is *west* of Bethlehem. Okay, not all of it. But if the wise men were coming from the East together, none of them would be from Africa. For that to work, Balthasar—for some un-star-related reason—would’ve swung east of Bethelem first to meet the other two and then come east with them.
I can’t help but wonder if Bathasar wasn’t thought to be Indian. The English have long lumped Africans and Indians together as “blacks”. Certainly that was still the usage when I lived in the UK in the late eighties and as far back as I am aware of the term to indicate a group of people at all, although the fifth century does seem a little early for it.
(I always put quotation marks around colors being used to describe humans. Humans, like most mammals, come in one color: brown. We’re all just different shades thereof. The sooner we get rid of the sociological construction our cultures have developed regarding the importance of those shades—and the exaggeration of them by using inappropriate colors—the better.)
January 7, 2022 at 12:48 AM
K Hindall
Oh, and regarding liturgical colors. I know the United Methodists had a Pentecost season, and I’m sure at least a few Sundays after Ephiphany were referred to ask the “nth Sunday of Epiphany”.
(Wikipedia says that for Methodists, Ephiphany runs “from Epiphany Day until Ash Wednesday,” but I don’t like using any wiki as a sole source. It does look like exactly what “Epiphany” means does vary with your brand of Christianity.)
And I could swear green was used for Epiphany and red (for the fire of the Holy Ghost) for Pentecost.
Of course it’s been forty-some years since I was in a UMC church. . . .
January 8, 2022 at 2:36 PM
Wayne
I am a fallen Methodist (I like it down here) and I seem to recall the altar cloth as being green from Epiphany until Lent season–which seems in keeping with this (admittedly crude) liturgical calendar. What I find more interesting is that the Christian colors (purple, red, white, and green) are the colors of Dionysus. For some reason I felt like we would get Jove’s colors of sky blue, white, gold, and Phoenician red (although I guess that is not tooo different). Spot on with your comments about the colors of humanity (although I usually think of us as all being various weird shades & tints of orange).