In recognition of Old Christmas Day, January 6
Published 6:43 pm Friday, January 5, 2024
- File Photos Christmas Day is celebrated December 25, but it’s not the end of the Christmas story. In many Western Christian traditions, there are 12 days of Christmas, culminating on January 6. That’s when many believe the “Magi” or “wise men” or “three kings” arrived to see the newborn baby Jesus. to bring him gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. Old Christmas has traditionally been celebrated locally at historic Clay Hill Church in Pronto.
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The Bible story of the Three Wise Men, from the gospel of Matthew known as the biblical Magi or the Three Kings. This Bible story is that a group of scholarly foreigners traveled to visit Jesus after his birth, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, during the time of King Herod, Wise Men from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.’ When King Herod learned this, he was troubled, and all of Jerusalem with him. He called together all the leading clerics and scholars of the law, and he questioned them about where Christ was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they answered, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’” Then Herod summoned the Wise Men secretly and found out from them the precise time the star had emerged. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him.”
As directed by King Herod, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the East went before them until it stopped over the area where the child lay. Upon arriving at the house, they observed the child with his mother, Mary, and they kneeled down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gold, incense, and myrrh gifts. They were then miraculously warned in a dream not to return to Herod, as he planned to kill Jesus to preserve his authority, and returned to their home by an alternative route.