Christmas Revelations
Day of Luck
Auguries of Good and Bad Tidings Are Observed
About Christmas Revelations
Christmas Revelations is the somewhat spooky outlier in the Christmas cycle: a day dedicated to omens and fortune-telling. Historically, the winter season was filled with eerie traditions of divination and prophecy, blending the fading mysteries of the old year with the anticipation of the new. Today we borrow that spirit with tongue-in-cheek homebrew rituals. Marshmallows in hot cocoa stand in for tea leaves, Pokémon cards become a makeshift Tarot deck, and constellations of Christmas lights hint at destiny. Once the fortunes have been told, the mood shifts naturally into testing luck in other ways (casual bets, silly wagers, or a few rounds of Christmas-themed Bingo) where even the smallest outcome feels symbolic. Will the mail arrive early? Can you win three rounds of Uno in a row? Perhaps these signs suggest a year of good fortune. Either way, the point is to declare and then decipher the little omens of your choosing, and maybe put five bucks on the pizza delivery person pressing the buzzer twice.
Ways to observe
(A) Low effort
Try your hand at ‘marshmallow divination.’ Drop marshmallows into hot chocolate, and interpret their patterns as omens for the year ahead.
(B) Recommended
Gather friends or family for a cozy evening of playful fortune-telling. Use whatever’s at hand (cards, dice, or even ornaments) to invent prophecies for each other. Conclude the night with a round of predictions for the coming year and record them for laughs next Christmas.
(C) High effort
Host a full-scale Christmas Revelations Party. Create stations for absurd fortune-telling games, such as improvised crystal ball readings (using snow globes), Christmas light astrology, and Bingo with prophecies tied to each square. Encourage costumes or festive robes for added mystique.
Inspiration
I love a good superstition, or really, any quasi-occult belief unmoored from reality. They’re the fidget-spinners of the soul. I’ve accumulated many over the years (including a few truly idiotic ones). A brief sampling:
Yuletide (12 Days of Christmas) » An eggshell fragment in your breakfast signifies an impending illness. » For whatever reason, in our house, we have one oddly large spoon. The superstition: If you reach into the silverware drawer and pull it out, without looking, good fortune is yours for the day. » If the Sunday paper lands below the second stair, go back to bed. I’m naturally drawn to first-footing customs and to the often contradictory folk beliefs that cluster around the New Year. In parts of Scotland and northern England, your year’s fortune could hinge on the first person to cross your threshold after midnight. (Best-case scenario: a dark-haired man bearing whiskey and coal.) In Eastern Europe, molten wax or lead is dripped into cold water and read for signs, like a budget-friendly Rorschach test that determines your destiny. In medieval Europe, the post-Christmas days were considered a thin place, when visions were common and ghosts wandered. Christmas Revelations picks up that thread. It's a day for unlikely signs and cheerful, dumb, self-declared omens.
Adornments
Watch
Bell, Book, and Candle (1958)
Set against the backdrop of Christmastime Manhattan, this romantic comedy follows a modern-day witch who casts a love spell on her neighbor only to fall for him herself.
Serendipity (2001)
This holiday-tinged romance imagines a world where signs and coincidences shape destiny. When two strangers part ways after one magical evening, they leave their reunion up to fate.
Listen
Carol of the Bells (Traditional)
You know the one. Based on a Ukrainian folk chant, this haunting carol builds an urgent, hypnotic rhythm through cascading harmonies.
Children, Go Where I Send Thee (Traditional)
A traditional spiritual with cumulative verses and biblical numerology; each verse builds symbolically, linking figures and events into a prophetic chain.
Read
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Born at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai finds his life mysteriously intertwined with the fate of his country and with a cohort of other “midnight’s children” who possess strange powers.