There’s a Lesson in Here Somewhere Parents Families.com

Christmas isn’t over quite yet… at least in our home.

Tuesday we celebrate the Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day (formerly known as the “Feast of the Wise Men’’) or the 12th day of Christmas. Or, in the words of my preschooler: “A day for more presents.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday, January 6th basically foretells the visit by the Three Wise Men, who followed a star in the night to bring gifts to the infant Jesus. The Epiphany is a major holiday in Latin America, but in recent years it has been increasingly embraced by major retailers in the United States. In fact, this past weekend men dressed up as the Three Kings visited more than 480 Wal-Mart stores across the country to commemorate the occasion and promote special savings in the discount chain’s toy department. Children were also given the opportunity to have their picture taken with the Three Wise Men and deliver their own wish lists to the traveling threesome.

The retail hoopla that surrounds the Epiphany is rather disconcerting to me. As such I have tried to focus my growing daughter’s attention on the real meaning behind the day rather than have it turn into “Christmas Morning Part 2: Revenge of the Wrapping Paper.” We’ve read books, made an event of moving our Wise Men figurines an inch closer to the nativity each day and made pretty homemade crowns (courtesy of Dora the Explorer’s Three King’s Party Pages).

My daughter is old enough to grasp the concept behind the holiday. However, she is also old enough to retain and retrieve memories, and she knows that January 6th is traditionally a day that she gets presents. This year I tinkered with the notion of nixing the gifts, but that idea was met with great disdain by the people who come bearing the bulk of the presents–my parents.

I’ll spare you details of the “conversation” we had regarding their generous outpouring of material goods. Part of me knew better than to suggest that they go easy on the treats this year. Yet I persisted. After all, I maintained, surely they didn’t want their only granddaughter to think the Three Wise Men, who traversed afar following yonder star to pay homage to the Prince of Peace, were actually two people named grandma and grandpa.

I don’t know why I bother. If there is a lesson to be learned here I suppose it’s twofold: The first being to simply appreciate the kindness of others and the second–don’t mess with determined grandparents.

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