Dave Risendal:
Can anyone enlighten me about what season the ELCA thinks it is in when we celebrate The Day of Epiphany?
In the LBW, it was in the Christmas Cycle, but the first Sunday of a new season: the Epiphany Season (as is the case with the Revised Common Lectionary).
In ELW, it is listed as being in the Christmas season (The 13th Day of Christmas?). The following season, “Time after Epiphany,” seems to start on the Baptism of Our Lord.
Does anyone know who made that change, and why?

Katya Ouchakof:
seriously – I had the same question. our secretary was confused about whether she should use the liturgy we has chosen for the season of Christmas or the season of Epiphany, and I wasn’t sure what the answer was. obviously we just picked a setting and went with it, but it would be nice to know whether we’re wrapping up a season this Sunday or kicking off a new one.

Kit Kleinhans:
The Christmas CYCLE includes the three SEASONS of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. I’d hope that the editors of ELW made a simple terminological error, rather than attempting to rewrite the traditional understanding of the church year. Epiphany (the day and the season) is part of the larger cycle, but Jan 6 begins a new season within that cycle.

Dave Risendal:
ELW page 13: “The Christmas cycle begins with the first Sunday of Advent, four Sundays before December 25, and concludes with the Epiphany of Our Lord on January 6″ — the same notion is reflected in the chart on page 14. Clearly a change from LBW, which, as Kit mentions, includes all three seasons in the Christmas Cycle, and the Day of Epiphany in the Epiphany Season.

Marie Caron:
We’re wrapping up. Part of the confusion is that traditionally there wasn’t really an ‘Epiphany’ season, just as there isn’t a ‘Pentecost’ season, and there wasn’t a ‘Trinity’ season in the days of the SBH. The Christmas cycle draws to a close with the Epiphany, and we begin the first round of ordinal time, the Sundays after the Epiphany, with the Baptism oOL. Henry Horn told me once that if it was a ‘Sunday of or in’… it was a season; ‘Sunday after…’, it wasn’t. Liked Henry; he kept it simple.

Sue Seiffert:
So we really only have four seasons and two ordinary times?

Scott Morey:
It’s a turning point, neither in either season, I think. It’s technically not the season OF Epiphany…but the Season (Time) after Epiphany. Seems that I read this somewhere. Maybe Chitisitter?

Ron Roschke:
I think it’s always important to remember that practice shapes tradition. Epiphany is a doorway between Christmas and everything that follows up to Easter. In strict liturgical time, days begin at sundown (the Jewish practice), and so the first Christ-mass is in the evening of December 24. (Likewise, the first celebration of Easter is at the Vigil Saturday night.) That makes tonight, the night between January 5 and 6, “Twelfth Night,” which is the night following the twelfth day of Christmas. Technically, Christmas is over at sundown today. This doorway nature of Epiphany gets translated two different ways in the tradition, with some observing it as “Christmas” and some as “Epiphanytide.” I think you can go either way, but be sure to celebrate the door. It gets even more confusing because we have conflated Matthew’s and Luke’s Christmas stories and have magi and camels at the manger, drawing that story into “Christmas,” whereas other traditions make a bigger deal about Matthew’s story and emphasize Epiphany/Theophany (for example, Orthodoxy).

Kit Kleinhans:
Interesting that the worship pages of the ELCA website identify Epiphany as the first day of a new season that lasts through Transfiguration. So why is ELW different?
http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Worship/Planning/Epiphany.aspx

Dave Risendal:
And to thoroughly confuse matters, the ELCA web site includes The Day of Epiphany in the Christmas season in their version of the lectionary.
http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Worship/Lectionary/Year-C/Christmas.aspx

Dave Risendal:
So Ron: sundown to sundown 12/24-12/25 is Nativity of Our Lord; sundown to sunup 12/25-12/26 is First Night (Christmas Season); sundown to sunup 1/5-1/6 is Twelfth Night (no season, or either season)?

Marie Caron:
Sue, maybe a contemporary way of putting it is to say two cycles and ordinary time, in two parts.

Kit Kleinhans:
Dave, here’s my hypothesis, drawing on several of the observations made above, in an attempt to answer your original “Why?” question. The folk who put ELW together wanted to emphasis ordinary time, rather than lump all those green Sundays either into Epiphany or into Pentecost. It’s true that those are Sundays “after” and thus seemingly not part of the seasons themselves. So far, so good. But I think that in freeing up the green Sundays from a variable-length season of Epiphany, they lost sight of the traditional octave of Epiphany (a much shorter season, if you will). As you note in your original post, the time after Epiphany doesn’t begin immediately after Epiphany but with (after, I would think) the Baptism of our Lord. I think that treating Epiphany as “the end of Christmas” rather than a festival with its own octave was an over-correction (perhaps due to an aversion to trying to explain octaves to the laity?). Regardless, I think Ron Roschke’s doorway/transition imagery is helpful, and I think it’s important to reclaim Epiphany as Epiphany, with its historic cluster of texts (Magi, Baptism of our Lord, wedding at Cana [traditional date for wedding of Cana miracle was Jan 6]) rather than to let it dwindle away as ;ittle more than “the end” of Christmas.

Dave Risendal:
Marie: the argument for “no season” makes more sense with ELW, where the series Lectionary 1, 2, 3… take place between Baptism of Our Lord and Transfiguration of Our Lord, and then continue after Holy Trinity.

Kirsten Nelson Roenfeldt:
Dave Risendal, Kit Kleinhans and Ron Roschke…. you have all just made my day.

Dave Risendal:
Kit: I’m with you (I think — although the longer this goes on, the less there is that makes me certain…). Epiphany seems a better fit with the season (or non-season) that follows. I often emphasize that the Greek word “epi-phanos” means to shed light on, and during these weeks we explore how this collection of texts shed light on who Jesus of Nazareth is, and what that means for us. The visit of the Magi seems like a helpful way to begin that journey.
Besides, if Epiphany becomes the 13th day of Christmas, what is my true love going to have to give to me on that day?

Scott Alan Johnson:
Our authority is neither the ELW or the ELCA website, but the one-page liturgical calendar that goes out every year. So I might get a surprise when I go over to the church tomorrow.

Katya Ouchakof:
this year seems to be particularly confusing, since the 6th is actually a Sunday – if the 6th were today, we’d have no trouble understanding tomorrow as the first Sunday after Epiphany. as it is, having Epiphany on a Sunday invites confusion…. and good online discussions!

Kit Kleinhans:
Dave, I believe black cats and ladders are the traditional gifts for the 13th day of Christmas

Ron Roschke:
Hi, all. Out of the loop for an hour and the conversation goes on. This has always been a mystery to me as well. I think “Epiphany as doorway” tries to say that it falls in “no season” but connects two seasons. In the tradition two things are true: Christmas begins at sundown December 24; that’s why we celebrate the birth in the dark. And technically this should be “First Night of Christmas.” But it is also clear in the tradition that tonight is “Twelfth Night.”

Ron Roschke:
…more. I think the key is that they are DAYS of Christmas, and thus begin at the dawn of the next day. Thus, technically, “First Night of Christmas” probably FOLLOWS sunset on December 25. The only thing for sure is that January 6 falls on a Sunday this year! Fun thread! Thanks!
56 minutes ago · Unlike · 1

Dave Risendal:
Thanks, Ron. I almost understood that!

Ron Roschke:
One more comment: the confusion of the day is NOTHING compared to the fact that Matthew has pagan astrologers showing up as the first proclaimers of Gospel after the birth of the Child! BTW, check out T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi.” Love it!

Dave Risendal:
and the “King of the Jews” and all of Jerusalem are frightened…

Here’s what the May 2009 Lutheran Witness magazine says about the church: “founded in 1868, the congregation saw the city of St. Louis surround it, prosper, and then decline. After the part-time pastor left in 1995, ambitious seminarians from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis–later assisted by the LCMS Missouri District and the Lutheran Church Extension Fund–began the transformation that continues today. Volunteer labor and support from area churches helped refurbish the facilities.”

I suppose that means that the vision for today’s ministry at Christ in the City was inspired in a group of seminary students, not in what remained of the original congregation, which pretty much ceased to exist in the late 90′s. The full article can be read at http://witness.lcms.org/pages/wPage.asp?ContentID=551&IssueID=33.

I’m proud to be able to say that my suburban-St. Louis church’s youth group contributed to the volunteer effort to refurbish Christ in the City (and I was there, helping remove the floor in the balcony), and I have worshiped, dined, sipped caramel macchiatos, attended meetings and performed music at Crave. It IS a dynamic progressive witness in a place where witness is desperately needed!