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Every year on January 11 or 12, Dayr Abu Hinnis, a small, isolated Christian village 186 miles south of Cairo, commemorates the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. The celebrations at Dayr Abu Hinnis begin in the early morning hours as Coptic pilgrims ferry across the Nile, singing and clapping joyfully, ahead of the official procession.

Along the East Bank's shoreline, believers position themselves to watch Coptic Orthodox Bishop Demetrius from the nearby town of Malawi cross the Nile in a splendidly decorated felucca, an ancient sailing boat.

A procession with crosses and icons moves through the village proper, past the fifth-century church, ending at Kom Maria, a desolate sand hill just outside the village. At the hill, the faithful pitch a festival tent. According to Coptic tradition, the Holy Family rested on that hill during their flight from Herod's soldiers, who were in hot pursuit.

For the Copts, a group of mostly Orthodox Christians in Egypt, the arrival of Joseph, Mary, and the newborn Jesus is Egypt's great moment in the gospel story. What Herod intended for evil in slaughtering Bethlehem's children, which Jesus narrowly escaped, God turned into a blessing for all Egypt.

In the cave church of Dayr Abu Hinnis, sixth-century paintings tell the story of the flight into Egypt from the narrative in Matthew 2: The Magi ask King Herod, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?"

Herod, fearful of a potential rival, urges the Magi to inform him where to find the young king, "so that I too may go and worship him." But God exposes Herod's evil plans. The Magi, warned in a dream, return to their own country without informing him.

An angel in a dream warns Joseph of Herod's malicious intent. "Arise!" the angel declares. "Take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word" (Matt. 2:13, KJV). Herod realizes the Magi have outwitted him. Furious, he gives orders to kill all the children age 2 and younger in the region around Bethlehem.

Many villages in Egypt boast that the Holy Family paid them a visit. For centuries, perhaps for 1,600 years, Coptic congregations have organized pilgrimage festivals, called mulids, to honor the Holy Family's visit to their area. The celebration in Dayr Abu Hinnis is just one of those mulids.

The mulids are a traditional time of corporate prayer for Coptic believers. Pilgrims pray for their families, or for healing. During the mulid, the participants celebrate with a feast in which local Muslim friends and family may be invited.

Matthew's Gospel provides no details about the Holy Family's travels in Egypt, so the early Coptic Church developed oral traditions to flesh out their visit. The contemporary Coptic church still values oral tradition greatly. The lack of historical or archaeological evidence has had no influence on oral tradition.

"The church in the first centuries was persecuted by the Romans," says Bishop Demetrius, author of a widely distributed booklet about the Holy Family. "Naturally, putting oral traditions on paper wouldn't be people's first concern. But you never know; perhaps we will later find documents of this period."

The first Holy Family site is mentioned in A History of the Monks in Egypt, an ancient text describing the journey of seven pilgrims to Egypt in the late fourth century. People in Hermopolis (known today as al-Ashmunayn, 174 miles south of Cairo) told these pilgrims about a pagan temple, where the idols had fallen down after Jesus had entered the city, a story that would have encouraged believers in a time when paganism was still strong.

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December 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15