January 5: Epiphany

It’s a very old dilemma: would you tell your best friend if their lover was a cheater? The sun god Helios did, informing Hephaistos about the affair between his wife Aphrodite and war god Ares. Aphrodite’s revenge was swift: she cursed Helios to fall in love with a little mortal, Leukothoé. It all went out of hand when Leukothoés father didn’t agree, and punished his daughter by burying her alive. A devastated Helios turned her into a frankincense tree, according to Ovid “so that she would still breathe air, after a fashion…”  And when we think of frankincense, of course myrrh and gold come to mind, especially this time of year. Most of the gold would be found in the river Paktolos, since golddigger Midas used it to wash his curse away. And as far as the myrrh is concerned, this would have originated from the princess Myrrha, who tricked her own father into an affair. When he found out, he chased her away, the gods created a myrrh tree out of her, and as such, she gave birth to the most beautiful boy ever, Adonis. And yes, to the Greeks, all of this made perfect sense.