Christmas D – Three Kings

Christmas

Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar

Various tales and stories circulate about the Three Kings or Wise Men, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. The Gospel of Matthew notes that they came to Jerusalem from afar, from the East, to pay homage to the newborn Jesus. Their way was shown to them by the comet over Bethlehem. In Jerusalem they were supposedly received by King Herod, who persuaded them to report back the place of Jesus’s birth. But with a warning from God this did not happen, and the Kings returned to their lands, far from Herod, by another route. It was not until three centuries after Jesus’s birth that the 25th of December was established as his day of birth. Originally 25 December was also the beginning of the year, and it was not until 1691 that 1 January was designated as the beginning of the year, by Pope Innocent XII. Originally the main – and only – holiday marking the Christmas period was Christ’s Manifestation or epiphany. Three events were combined in the holiday: the homage of the Three Kings, Jesus’s baptism in the River Jordan, and the wedding in Cana in Galilee. The Eastern Church retained the holiday of Jesus’s birth on 6 January.

In Slovenia the Feast of the Magi (the Three Kings) was marked by visits of carol singers, who originated in medieval worship, and their costumes and presence spread far through the practices of schoolchildren in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Prof. Janez Bogataj