Page 40 2024 Home For The Holidays Lincoln Daily News “Drie Koningen:” An unusual European Christmas tradition Not until 1968, did I experience my fi rst real Christmas. It was with the family of my fi rst wife, Marie. We had been married on December 21, 1968, and that year I celebrated Christmas at her parents’ home for the fi rst time. I was 20 years old. Before that I had not experienced the full pageantry and lore of Christmas as celebrated in America. Neither of my parents had grown up in a home where Christmas was celebrated and so they did not have Christmas traditions to pass on to us three kids. The only remotely related “tradition” that I can actually remember from my childhood, growing up in Belgium, was “Drie Koningen” (“Three Kings”). Church history also refers to this festival as “Epiphany” (the “Revealing” in the fl esh of the Son of God). Belgium celebrates Drie Koningen every year on January 6. It commemorates the incarnation of Jesus by focusing on the coming of “wisemen” from the East (considered to be “kings” in the story). Tradition says there were three of these “magi” and that they are named Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar. This number probably originates in the number of presents Jesus is said to have been presented. As early as the second century (seen in the church father Clement of Alexandria), the Eastern Church began to focus on January 6 as a good time to celebrate Christ’s birth and life. Some of these early Christians used January 6 to commemorate Jesus’ baptism and that may explain why January 6 has often been associated with the baptizing of infants. Related also is the custom of the priest praying over “holy water,” located at the entrance of Roman Catholic churches. When entering the church, a devout Roman Catholic dips the fi ngers of the right hand in this consecrated water and blesses him or herself with the sign of the cross. Because in the West (Rome) the incarnation from the beginning was celebrated on December 25, the celebration on January Continued --
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