Today is Little Christmas, or the Epiphany, when the wise men (3 kings) arrived to greet Jesus. I like to do something special to celebrate, which of course means food. I have a family recipe somewhere for Epiphany Cookies, but since I just made Butterfinger Cookies, I don't feel like making more cookies. Last year, I made a Galette des Rois, which is an almond cream filled puff pastry. It came out pretty good, but was more work than I want to take on right now. I'm probably going to make a Rustic Fruit Galette this year, because it's much simpler, and I have the ingredients on hand. Here's the recipe, in case anyone's interested in making one. It's basically the same as the fruit crostata I've posted before, or in English, a free form tart. A lot of the bakeries (and grocery stores) here stock up on King Cake (or King's Cake, Three Kings Cake, 3 Kings Cake) in the New Orleans tradition, with the purple and green sprinkles or food coloring, because we have a lot of Louisianians here. Do you celebrate Little Christmas/Epiphany/Three Kings Day?
When we were living in Ethiopia many years ago, Epitphany was celebrated. We would leave our Christmas tree up until then and our household help really liked that. Our housegirl would make a special Ethiopian meal for us to share with the houseboy the day before because we gave them Epiphany off so they could celebrate with their families.
That sounds like a nice feast, and I'm sure they appreciated having the day off. Many here start taking down their decorations on December 26th, which I find sad. People are in such a hurry to get them up the day after Thanksgiving, then in a rush to move on from the holiday. I was happy to see that my neighbor catty corner left his up, it's unusual around here.
My family always left the Christmas decorations up until the day after New Year Day, but we didn't celebrate what we called "Russian Christmas" on Jan. 6.
We call that day Three Kings although now the church is trying to change that to Epiphany. But I never heard of Little Christmas. When I was young, we would be excited to place our shoes or socks by the door on the night before the Epiphany. Adults would say that the 3 Kings might pass by our house and put some treats in our shoes. And in the morning, I would be so glad to see the candies and some coins in my shoes. That was an added treat to children aside from the grand affair on Christmas day when gifts are overflowing especially for children. But now, the so called 3 Kings seems to have been forgotten although the church is still celebrating it but the people are not anymore.