You will say, friends of words, that I did not go very far to find the word of the day… Certainly, since I decided to speak to you about Epiphany. But you will see that, in time and space, the journey of the word epiphany is long.
Not to mention that, even in terms of calendar, it's not that obvious. Come on, to start with, when is Epiphany? My Petit Larousse, my bible, what, tells me that“We celebrate it on the Sunday following January 1st.” That is to say in this year 2025… January 5, Sunday January 5, today, that is.
However, we often hear that it's January 6, so when do we eat the cake? You can eat it like me throughout the month of January, but the real day is January 6, so tomorrow, Monday. In fact, the story is that the Church, in the 1960s, decided, for greater convenience, to celebrate Epiphany on the first Sunday after January 1st. Double opportunity for pancakes!
Epiphany, not just a pancake party
But what is Epiphany originally? Not just a galette party, of course, it is a Christian festival celebrating the “manifestation of Christ, [Jésus enfant]to [Rois] mages [Melchior, Balthazar et Gaspard] came to adore him”, according to the dictionary (Larousse.fr). It is for this reason that l’ANDpiphanie is also called the feast of Kings, and moreover traditionally, with the pancake, we say that we “draw the kings”, when the one who is lucky enough to fall on the bean becomes king or queen.
And the word epiphany itself? It comes from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning “manifestation” or “appearance”. It is found in French from the 12th century with an F, which will be replaced by PH in the 17th century, at the time when the scholars here took it into their heads to give words the trace of their Greco-Latin origin.
I am taking this opportunity to answer a question asked by André, from La Rochelle, who wonders why PH in pharmacy or photography are not found in other Latin languages, such as Italian or Spanish. , where we write farmacia or fotografia with Fs. Well there you have it, those responsible are these 17th century scholars who decided to give the words the trace of their etymology, and then the Greek letter phi was rendered by PH. And there you have it how our Epiphany lost her F!
With or without capital letters?
Let us specify that the feast of the Epiphany is capitalized, like all religious festivals. Without capital letters, Epiphanyit's a somewhat literary way of designating a “sudden and luminous awareness”… It's often a bit ironic, when someone finally understands something, long after everyone else, we sometimes make fun by qualifying the event of epiphany… a divine revelation, what!
Well, and to return to our Three Wise Men, you should know that the word mageoriginally, designates a priest among the ancient Persians, according to the Historical Dictionary of the French Language, which would correspond well to these visitors from the Orient. And by the way, why the cake?
So there, this tradition is not at all linked to Christianity. It dates back to the Roman Saturnalia, the great festivals dedicated to Saturn, which took place at this time of the year, and during which slaves shared a cake with their masters. If the slaves fell on the bean, they became kings, and could obtain whatever they wanted for an entire day.
And the bean, originally, was a bean, a real vegetable bean. Bean comes from Latin fabathis white bean which had a great importance in the diet of the Romans. In medieval times, in our country, whoever came across the bean had to offer a drink to everyone present. Some preferred to say nothing… and swallow it… and that's why we started to adopt porcelain beans! Come on, enjoy the cake, friends of words, and don't swallow the bean!
Read more
