January 6
Winter
End of Christmas season, blessed chalk, marking doors, kings' visits, star, Christmas wishes
Three Kings on January 6 closes the Christmas in-between season. In Lithuania the day is linked with blessed chalk on doors, the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, visiting kings, carrying a star, and house-to-house greetings for health and fertile years.
What Are Three Kings and When Are They Celebrated?
Three Kings, or Epiphany, are celebrated on January 6. In church tradition the day remembers the wise men who came to honor the newborn Jesus; in Lithuania it also marks the end of the Christmas in-between season. According to VLE, this Epiphany feast has been universally celebrated in the Eastern Church since the 3rd century and in the Western Church since the late 4th century; during it gold, incense, and chalk are blessed in church.
VLE notes that in contemporary Lithuanian liturgical practice the solemnity may be moved to a Sunday between January 2 and 8. In the ethnographic calendar, January 6 remains the key boundary: Christmas time ends and quieter winter routine begins.
Why Are Doors Marked?
The clearest Three Kings sign is blessed chalk. Above doors people write the initials of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar with crosses, or simply draw three crosses. It is a Christian sign of house blessing and protection.
The custom is old in Lithuania. The Wolfenbuettel Postil of the sixteenth century mentions crosses marked above doors; Matthaeus Praetorius wrote of lietuvininkai in the Insterburg district in the late seventeenth century, and Jucevicius saw the sign in Samogitia in the early nineteenth century.
Kings, Star, and House Visiting
Another side of Three Kings was visiting. Men dressed as kings went through the village, accompanied by a star-bearer and a helper with a basket for gifts. In homes they sang, greeted hosts, and wished a good path through the year.
The star was important: it showed the way, recalled the wise men's journey, and drew attention. In some descriptions it was carried on a pole, with light from a candle inside. Such a star was both religious and theatrical.
Regional Forms of Three Kings
In stories recorded by K. Kapeleris in the Ragaine and Tilze areas in the mid-nineteenth century, Three Kings Day brought not only kings. Other Christmas figures appeared: bear, horse, crane, Jew, jokes, and house visiting.
In western Lithuania after the First World War, VLE mentions mounted Three Kings with cloaks covered in stars and wreaths. In Aukstaitija, according to EKGT, kings in some places wore sheepskins turned inside out like other calendar-time maskers.
Vilnius and Urban Scale
Three Kings visiting was not only a small-village practice. Imbrasiene gives a striking fact: in 1934, sixty-three groups of kings had permission in Vilnius to visit residents' apartments. The custom was visible in the city as well.
During war and the Soviet period, visiting by kings and other Christmas-season maskers declined. Its meaning is still easy to understand: the point is less the gifts than the visit, greeting, and inclusion of lonely or elderly people in the feast.
Marking Three Kings Today
The simplest way is to bring home blessed chalk and mark the door. Even a small sign helps make January 6 the closing of Christmas time, not merely the day the tree is taken down.
A community can revive the visiting custom with restraint: a star, a song, a greeting, and awareness of which form was known locally. The feast is strongest when it continues real Christmas visiting rather than staging vague antiquity.
