So on January 22 we celebrated the Ethiopia Orthodox holiday of Timket ( also known as baptism or the epiphany). This holiday is 15 days after the Ethiopian Christmas and celebrates Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. This is a very, if not the most important holiday for the Orthodox Christians in Ethiopian and around the world. It signifies the cleansing of the last year and blessing for the upcoming year and is a time to reflect and recommit yourself to God. The ceremony is quite spectacular. Each town, big and small, have some sort of celebration for this which are similar but of course different in their size and length of ceremony. In Gondar, where they have the famous Bath or Fasillades Priests and parades of people come from churches all around Gondar and come to the main place. Here you will find the largest celebration with people from all of the world in attendance. In our small town it is a big occasion and the traditional procession remains the same. I am not a religion expert, but this is how I understand the holiday and the culture that goes along with it from what I have learned over the past two years and asking a lot of questions. So this is my experience and understanding, but forgive me if it is not 100% correct.
The night before Timket many people go to the church when the Priest says a prayer and the eldest Priest brings out the tabot (arc of the covenant replica) which resides in the sacred heart of every Ethiopian Orthodox church. This book is covered with fancy velvet because it is too powerful for the average person to look at and it must be preserved. It is only taken out of the church during this time, I believe. The other younger priests will accompany the eldest priest and this tabot down from the church to the river. Each priest is adorned in nice white clothes and colorful umbrellas. Young church students sing and the priests sing and beat drums on the way down. They are singing about the baptism. It is very beautiful and lively. Then we get to the resting place for the night which is usually near a river because it is believed that all the waters of Ethiopia come from the Jordan river making the water very holy, as it is the same water Jesus was baptized in. So the priests go in a nearby shelter and sit here for the night praying and chanting with elders from the village. Many people bring the priests bread and injeera and siwa for the evening. At about 2am the priests perform the main mass for the day. This is the telling of the story from the bible of John and Jesus and they circle around the tabot. The entire ceremony is in the ancient language of Geez except for the sermons which are given in Tigrenya. Some people from the town attend this gathering, but mostly it is the numerous priests from the town and community elders. At around 6 in the morning the little boys in the town go around house to house singing and ask people to give injeera for the priests. They have a big basket to collect all of this and it is a great time for the kids and they are so happy for this day to come. At around 9am most of the people from the town go near the river to be baptized and listen to the priests’ sermons and blessings. We went to the river and saw the Priests dressed in colorful linens with big beautiful hats doing a ceremonial dance and chanting to bless the people in attendance. They are also blessing big barrels of water, or the river in order to later splash the attendees with it. After about a two hour service where the police talk, the town mayor and the head priest address the crowd and give them advice for the upcoming year, the main event takes place. At this point the priests begin to take buckets of water and throw it at the crowds and this year there was a hose of holy water because our river has dried up. This is like a mass baptism and everyone is praying and cleansing themselves for the new year. It is also supposed to act as a recreation of John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River. There is such a great energy in he crowd and everyone is so eager to get splashed with the holy water. The little children are anxiously waiting to fill their water bottles with the holy water to take it home to hang in their house for the coming year. It is a beautiful ceremony and you can feel the communal spirituality at this place, it is amazing. After the communal baptism then all of us escort the priests back to the church and stand outside the church walls and sing songs as the priest takes the tabot back to it resting pace for the rest of the year. After this it is time to eat meat with friends, drink the traditional siwa and coffee and visit with all of your friends.
It is probably our favorite holiday and the most beautiful ceremony we have seen. If you ever get the chance to be in Ethiopia during Timket, do it, you will not be disappointed. And it is always nice to be blessed for the coming year.