Epiphany.

Differentiates from neighbors

Epiphany closes the Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25 through January 5/6) — it is paired with Christmas as the bookends of the Nativity season, with Christmas marking the Incarnation and Epiphany marking the manifestation of that Incarnation to the wider world. It contrasts with Easter (movable, focused on the Resurrection and preceded by Lent) and with Carnival, which begins on or after Epiphany and runs to Shrove Tuesday. In Spain and Latin America, Epiphany functionally inverts the Anglo-American gift-giving pattern: January 6, not December 25, is the principal children's gift day.

Religious / civic / cultural context

Epiphany ('manifestation' from Greek epiphaneia) is one of the three principal feasts of the historic Christian year alongside Easter and Pentecost, and predates the fixing of December 25 as Christmas in Rome. In the Western tradition the focus narrowed to the visit of the Magi (and thus to the 'manifestation to the Gentiles'); in the East it retained its older focus on Christ's baptism in the Jordan and is called Theophany ('manifestation of God'). The civil retention of January 6 as a public holiday tracks Catholic and Orthodox state-church history: Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Austria preserved it through secularisation, while traditionally Protestant countries (UK, Netherlands, most of Germany) demoted it to a working day or transferred it to the nearest Sunday.

Observance mode by jurisdiction

• ·Statutory public holiday in roughly 22 countries on January 6, including Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Liechtenstein, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, and Ethiopia (the latter on January 19 as Timkat).
• ·Marks the canonical end of the Twelve Days of Christmas in the West: Christmas decorations come down, Christmas markets close (notably across the German-speaking lands), and the liturgical season transitions to Ordinary Time or Epiphanytide.
• ·In the Eastern Orthodox world, Theophany (January 6 Gregorian for new-calendar churches, January 19 for old-calendar) centres on the Great Blessing of the Waters, with priests casting a wooden cross into seas, rivers, or harbours; swimmers race to retrieve it for a year's blessing.
• ·In Germany, Switzerland, and parts of central Europe, the Sternsinger tradition sees children dressed as the three Magi go house-to-house singing, collecting charity donations, and chalking '20*C+M+B+26' (Christus Mansionem Benedicat) over doorways.

Country-specific behavior

Only countries whose pattern departs from the headline observance rule are listed.

Sources

• Codice Civile / Legge 5 marzo 1977 n. 54 (Italy) — confirms L'Epifania (January 6) as a statutory festivita nazionale.
• Boletin Oficial del Estado (Spain), Real Decreto on calendario laboral — confirms Epifania del Senor / Dia de Reyes as a national fiesta laboral on January 6.
• Bundesgesetzblatt / Landesfeiertagsgesetze for Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Saxony-Anhalt — confirm Heilige Drei Koenige as a statutory public holiday only in these three Laender.
• Greek Ministry of Interior, official public holidays list (Ta Fota / Theophania) — confirms January 6 as a national public holiday.
• Ethiopian Federal Public Holidays Proclamation No. 16/1975 and subsequent amendments — confirm Timkat on Tir 11 in the Ethiopian calendar (January 19 / 20 Gregorian).
• Polish Sejm, Ustawa z dnia 24 wrzesnia 2010 r. — restored January 6 (Trzech Kroli) as a statutory public holiday.