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January 12, 2026 – The last post talked about Christmastide – also called the 12 days of Christmas – that begins on December 25 and ends on January 6 with the Feast of Epiphany. (Which also celebrates the visit of the Wise Men – the Magi – and their bringing gifts to the infant Jesus.) But January 6 also marks the start of the Season of Epiphany, which typically ends with Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. (This year Ash Wednesday comes on February 18, and Lent ends on April 5, Easter Sunday.) But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Each year, January 6 is the traditional day to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany.  (In this sense, an “annual religious celebration.”) See also the Satucket piece on Epiphany:

“Epiphany” is a word of Greek origin, related to such English words as “theophany,” “phenotype,” and “phenomenon.”  It means an appearance, a displaying, a showing forth, a making clear or public or obvious.  On this day, Christians have traditionally celebrated the making known of Jesus Christ to the world.

Note that “making Jesus known to the world.” In other words, the Epiphany celebrates the world getting “first introduced to Jesus.” And aside from this feast day, January 6 and others close to it – which sometimes overlap – have other names like Plough Monday, Three Kings Day (as in, “We Three Kings of Orient are”), and Twelfth Night. And now for some lesser-known details.

Plough Monday comes right after Plough Sunday, of which more below. And Plough Monday – following the first Sunday after January 6 – once marked the start of the agricultural work year in Merry Olde England. (References to it go back as far as the 15th century.) And as noted that first Sunday after the Epiphany is Plough Sunday, when a ploughshare was brought into the local Christian church, with prayers for blessing human labor, tools, and the land. However:

Plough Monday customs declined in the 19th century. The advent of mechanised farming meant that agricultural workers were less numerous and relatively better paid, and thus did not have to beg for money in the winter. Additionally, the rowdy and threatening behaviour of the plough gangs was increasingly controversial in this period, and there was pressure from authorities to stop, or moderate their excesses. (Emphasis added.)

All of which bears some explaining. For starters, the Church of England had a long church service on Plough Sunday, with prayers especially for a bountiful harvest in the season to come. The service included a prayer for the Blessing of the Plough: “By your [God’s] blessing, let this plough be a sign of all that you promise to us. Prosper the work of our hands, and provide abundant crops for your people to share.” It also helps to remember that back then life was generally “nasty, brutish and short.” Mostly living hand to mouth, meaning if the harvest was bad, people starved. Which helps explain the rowdy behavior authorities looked down on.

So Plough Sunday was a way to celebrate – and maybe boost – farming and farm workers. (“On whom” the community relied on to survive.) But since you couldn’t work on Sundays – back in the good old days – the new agricultural year didn’t really start until the next work day, Plough Monday. (When the farm-workers could start plowing again.)

The point of all this – Twelfth Night, Plough Sunday, Plough Monday, etc. – was to give those hard-working farm-workers one last big blast before getting back to work. (Resuming work after the long winter holiday season when little farming could be done.) And as such it was a good occasion for the general tomfoolery shown in the image at the top of the page. (Which included enough rowdy, boisterous behavior to get the celebrations banned in some places):

In some areas, particularly in northern England and East England, a plough was hauled from house to house in a procession, collecting money. They were often accompanied by musicians, an old woman or a boy dressed as an old woman, called the “Bessy,” and a man in the role of the “fool.”

And finally, people celebrated Plough Monday with Plough Pudding, shown below: A “boiled suet pudding, containing meat and onions. It is from Norfolk and is eaten on Plough Monday.” But again, the Epiphany “celebrates the revelation of God the Son as human in Jesus Christ:”

The observance [of Epiphany] was a general celebration of the manifestation of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. It included the commemoration of his birth; the visit of the Magi[and] all of Jesus’ childhood events, up to and including his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist…

And the Epiphany starts the Epiphany Season, the four to nine weeks from January 6 through the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The season’s Gospel readings describe events manifesting the divinity of Jesus, including the coming of the Magi and Jesus’ baptism. The gospels for the other Sundays of the Epiphany season describe the wedding at Cana, the calling of the disciples, and various miracles and teachings of Jesus. The Last Sunday after the Epiphany is always devoted to the Transfiguration. Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is dramatically revealed.

And that’s the Reason for the [Epiphany] Season. In the meantime, enjoy the Plough Pudding.

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The upper image is courtesy of the December 28, 2015, post, “Here’s to Plough Monday!”

The Book of Common Prayer reference: The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

Feast days are designated days on the liturgical (church) calendar “set aside to commemorate events, saints, or doctrines that are important in the life of the Church. These can range from Solemnities, which are the highest-ranking feast days like Easter and Christmas, to optional memorials that celebrate lesser-known saints.” Feast Days: Celebrating the Church’s Calendar.

Re: Magi. From the original Greek μάγοι or ‘magoi,’ the term originally referred to the Iranian priestly caste of Zoroastrianism. “Within this tradition, priests paid particular attention to the stars and gained an international reputation for astrology, which was at that time highly regarded as a science. Their religious practices and astrological abilities caused derivatives of the term Magi to be applied to the occult in general and led to the English term magic.”

For this post I borrowed from posts including 2017’s To Epiphany – “and BEYOND,” Happy Epiphany – 2018, and “Happy Epiphany (season) – 2025!” For a more personal, maybe morbid note see Epiphany ’23, the end of Christmas and “farewell Mi Dulce.” The latter included links to both Infinite Frogs and the Infant [Jesus] of Prague – Wikipedia. And the quote, “as they say, ‘in teaching you will learn.'” And that through the lady in question, “I learned that there actually are websites for Infinite Frogs.”

Re: “Olde England.” See Merry England Explained: In one sense it “was not a myth. They really did used to dance around the maypole, feast all day and drink beer all night. And not only was it more merry, the merry-making was actually encouraged by the Church, particularly in the later medieval period.” But in another sense, it “may be treated both as a product of the sentimental nostalgic imagination and as an ideological or political construct, often underwriting various sorts of conservative world-views. Favourable perceptions of Merry England reveal a nostalgia for aspects of an earlier society that are missing in modern times.” The link goes into great detail.

The link Twelfth Night (holiday) – Wikipedia details some of the confusion around deciding which night was “twelfth,” as in January 5 or 6. It also noted that “Twelfth Night in the Netherlands became so secularised, rowdy, and boisterous that public celebrations were banned by the Church.”

Note: Although “reason for the season” is usually applied to Christmas, I’d say it applies to all seasons in the Liturgical year, “each with their own mood, theological emphases, and modes of prayer.” They all culminate in Easter Sunday, per Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Emphasis added.)

The lower image is courtesy of Norfolk Plough Pudding for Plough Monday – Lavender and Lovage.

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