8/365 Peace be to this house

I learned of the custom when I was teaching at the school. Our former pastor, Fr. Bill, came by with a box of chalk. I was already in the west-facing classroom so it was my second year. I don't know why he didn't come by the first year. Perhaps he'd only recently become acquainted with the practice, which I cannot find any exact ethnic reference to online (and I haven't gone to try to research it elsewhere, honestly). Is it Orthodox? German? Irish? I don't know. I had never seen it done, but after that first day, I would see it on occasion driving down St. Louis streets.

Bill knocked on the doorframe and stepped into my classroom. It was the middle of the day and my homeroom class--a group of 10 boys and 2 girls--were there for math. He pardoned his interruption and handed me the box of chalk, which I thought was amusing considering how much chalk I went through in a given month as the middle school math teacher in the building. Then, without apology or explanation, he wrote this on the lintel of the door:

20 + C + M + B + 01

Which, of course, looked like an equation to me and I wasn't exactly sure what he was going for. He explained that the past Sunday had been Epiphany and this was the traditional house blessing over doors done on that day (or on the traditional day set for Epiphany, January 6). The 20 and the 01 represented the year (2001); the plus signs were crosses; the CMB were Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. The traditional names given to the 3 wise men, who of course are not named in the bible and aren't even numbered. But it could also stand for the Latin phrase, Christus Mansionem Benedicat, although I personally think that might be a stretch. Either way, the mark was made above my classroom door.

He did go around the hallway with his box of chalk and repeat the blessing on other doors. And I went home myself with my own chalk from the board tray, got out a ladder, and put it above my own door. I was 3 months pregnant at the time, I realize looking back now.

Rain and snow washed the chalk away after a time, although it created a new tradition for my family and I try to remember as I'm putting away Christmas, that it's time to bless the house. My classroom door, though, was indoors. The weather wasn't going to rinse off the chalk. And knowing the janitorial team, nothing else was, either. It was there the last day I worked in the building.

The school closed two years later. I don't know why I was there, but sometime a few years back before we started the process of trying to sell the building, I was up on that floor again. Some of the doors still had the blessing written above them.

Sometimes I wish our parish had a more traditional Epiphany, although our migration mass is appropriate to the theme. But it might be nice to have the announcement of the date of Easter, for instance, and a blessing of chalk for us all to take home and use to write cryptic messages above our front doors. I haven't done my door yet this year--Epiphany came with the snow and I knew it would all be washed and blown away faster than I could put it up. But I'll get it done during the next few days. A sort of ephemeral mezuzah.