Epiphany (holiday) the calendar used, calling the feast that of the Nativity and Theophany of Our Lord. Origen's list of festivals (in "Contra Celsum", VIII, xxii) omits any reference to Epiphany. The first reference to an ecclesiastical feast of the Epiphany, in Ammianus Marcellinus (XXI:ii), is in 361. In parts of the Eastern Church, January 6 continued for some time as a composite feast that included the Nativity of Jesus: though Constantinople adopted December 25 to commemorate Jesus' birth in the fourth century, in other parts the Nativity of Jesus continued to be celebrated on January 6, a date later devoted exclusively
Epiphany (feeling) was only published posthumously in 1944. For the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, epiphany or a manifestation of the divine is seen in another's face (see face-to-face). In traditional and pre-modern cultures, initiation rites and mystery religions have served as vehicles of epiphany, as well as the arts. The Greek dramatists and poets would, in the ideal, induct the audience into states of "catharsis" or "kenosis", respectively. In modern times an epiphany lies behind the title of William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch", a drug-influenced state, as Burroughs explained, "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork." Both