"Significantly,
January 6 was a major pre-Christian holy day in the ancient world. In Alexandrian Egypt it was the birthday of
"Aeon" - the personification of Infinite Time. According to the church father Epiphanius, the birth was
celebrated in Alexandria at the Korion, a pagan temple of the
divine maiden or Virgin. After
ritually processing with an effigy of the divine child, which bore
the image of a golden cross, the celebrants exclaimed at dawn:
"Today, at this hour, the Kore, that is to say the Virgin,
has given birth to the Aeon".
- Jesus Christ, sun of God: ancient cosmology
and early Christian
symbolism, by David R. Fideler
p.159-160