Truly it is worthy... as we consider the birth of the blessed Stephan, who was both levite and martyr, and who set forth for us venerable examples of faith, of holy courage, of stewardship and outstanding chastity, of preaching and of marvelous constancy, of confession and patience. And therefore worthily with the feast of his passion does he before all others follow the birth of Thy Son, of whose everlasting glory he came forth as the first martyr. Through (the same) Christ our Lord, through whom the angels praise Thy majesty... (An ancient preface for the feast of St Stephen the First Martyr.)
The Ordination of the First Deacons, 1511, by the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65 - ca. 1525). Now in the Gemäldegallerie in Berlin.
VD: Beati Stephani levitae simul et martyris natalitia recolentes, qui fidei, qui sacrae militiae, qui dispensationis et castitatis egregiae, qui praedicationis mirabilisque constantiae, qui confessionis ac patientiae nobis exempla veneranda proposuit. Et ideo nativitatem Filii tui merito prae ceteris passionis suae festivitate subsequitur, cuius gloriae sempiternae primus martyr occurrit. Per eundem Christum, Dominum nostrum...
In the days of the Venetian Republic, one of the most important aspects of the city’s religious life was a group of large and prestigious confraternities known as the “scuole grandi – the great schools.” These associations engaged in a wide variety of devotional and charitable activities, and each of them had a large hall on which these activities were centered. There was also a number of lesser schools, one of which was dedicated to St Stephan, and frequented by men in the wool trade. The painting shown above is one of five which this school commissioned from the painter Carpaccio in honor of their patron. The schools were all suppressed when the Republic was overthrown by Napoleon, and the possessions stolen and scattered; the fourth of the series, which depicted the trial of St Stephen, was lost.
Many Venetian artists excelled at representing texture in their paintings, and loved to show rich embroidered cloths like the dalmatics in the painting above, or the garment of the man looking up at Stephen in the next one. But they tended to be weak on their drawing, and as a result, their lines are often rather hazy. (Michelangelo, very much a product of the Florentine school which excelled at drawing, is reported to have said of the Venetian artist Titian that he would be a superb painter if he would just learn how to draw.) Carpaccio, however, is a master of both drawing and perspective, which is how he is able to use the rather fantastic architectural elements in the background to create an enormous sense of space.
Here are the remaining three: the Preaching of St Stephen, now in the Louvre.
The Disputation of St Stephen, now in the Brera Gallery in Milan.
The Martyrdom of St Stephen, now in the State Gallery in Stuttgart. Notice the clever way Carpaccio emphasizes the collective participation in the martyrdom by giving us several figures wearing red cloth.
The Wren Boys in County Kerry, Ireland, one of many topsy-turvy Twelvetide customs
Topsy-Turvy Twelve Days of Christmas, Part I
For most of Christian history, the Twelve Days of Christmas—the period in between the two great feasts of Christmas on December 25 and the Epiphany on January 6—was the real time to celebrate. Courts and businesses would be closed during this time, the firewood would already be chopped and the food already processed, and everyone would abstain from work as much as they could. Feasting and gift-giving did not end on Christmas Day but continued (on and off) for the next week and a half. Even the farm animals got a break from labor and some extra food, in honor of the ox and the ass reputedly present at the Lord’s birth.
Theatrical reenactments of the Christmas story were often held during the Twelve Days, along with other pageants and masquerades. In the home, the Christmas tree stayed up until the day after Epiphany and was lit every night. Families would gather around it to pray and sing Christmas carols.
But perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the Twelve Days of Christmas were its topsy-turvy elements, customs that inverted almost every social ranking of the day. Rich and poor, laity and clergy, youth and elder, servant and master, enlisted and officer, men and women—everything and everyone would be turned upside down. Inversion practices are not unique to Christendom: the ancient Mesopotamians had a primitive version of it, and the Romans celebrated the Saturnalia from December 17th to as late as the 23rd with masquerading, loud clothes, and masters either serving their slaves dinner or dining with them (slaves were even allowed to wear the pileus, the felt cap signifying emancipation).
But customs that up-end take on new meaning in light of Christian belief. In Acts 17, 6, St. Luke records the accusation of Jews at Thessalonica who were envious of the Christians as “they who turned the world upside down.” Christianity does indeed turn the world upside down, for it rejoices in the Creator becoming a creature, nestling in the womb of one of His creations and being born a helpless babe. Topsy-turvy customs are a giddy imitation of the ultimate inversion, that God became man and that the King of Kings came as a servant.
In this four-part series, we take a look at some of these venerable, irreverent customs, and we will conclude for more conjectures on their theological and social purpose. But we begin with the Feasts of St. Stephen the Martyr and St. John the Apostle.
St. Stephen’s Day (December 26)
St. Stephen, one of the first seven men ordained a deacon by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is called the “Proto-Martyr,” for in being stoned to death by order of the Sanhedrin, he was the first disciple to voluntarily shed his blood for the Faith. Stephen is a model of that divinely-infused love known in the Christian tradition as agape or caritas or “charity,” for as a deacon he served the poor, and as a martyr he forgave his murders.
Boxing Day
One custom that imitates Saint Stephen’s charity on his feast is Boxing Day. The name may be derived from opening the poor boxes in the church and distributing their contents to the poor; or it may come from the custom of giving servants Christmas boxes for their journey home on their day off. Either way, the idea is that the rich should give to the poor and masters to their servants. In the British and Canadian militaries, this principle has been applied to officers and enlisted personnel. In Canada, officers serve Christmas dinner to non-commissioned officers and NCOs serve stewards. Throughout the Christmas season, “rules are bent in a playful way. Commanding Officers frequently switch roles and tunics with the youngest member of the unit. This soldier then becomes the honorary commander for the day. The remainder of the officers and the warrant officers and sergeants exchange their jackets and tunics for chef’s hats and aprons.” And on Christmas morning in the British Army, officers on deployment go to the beds of their enlisted men and serve them a “Gunfire,” hot tea mixed with a shot of rum.
In many places Boxing Day remains the customary occasion for giving gifts to one’s servants, paperboy, postal worker, and so on.
Horses
Not all customs associated with December 26 point so lucidly to the life of St. Stephen. The holy deacon is considered the patron saint of horses, despite the fact that he has no Scriptural connection to them. Some speculate that this patronage may have something to do with the relief from work that domestic animals, at the behest of St. Francis of Assisi, enjoyed during the Twelve Days of Christmas, but no one is certain.
In any case, the association stuck, especially in rural areas. Horse parades, horse races, and a “St. Stephen’s ride” in a sleigh or wagon were common, as was decorating one’s horse and riding it to the church for a blessing. Horse food (hay or oats) would also be blessed on this day. But this is not to say that horses enjoyed every aspect of the feast. In some parts of sixteenth-century England, people let out their horses’ blood with a knife “because Saint Stephen was killed with stones.” Happily, the equestrian motif survives in less violent ways today. In several nations it is customary to bake special breads in the form of horseshoes to honor St. Stephen.
Stefaniritte (Stephen’s Ride) in Austria
Ritual Scourging
Speaking of violence, there was a pre-Christian winter practice of one group ritually scourging another, not as an act of cruelty or punishment, but of kindness: the scourging either drove away bad spirits or imparted the sacred qualities of the tree whose branches were being used. One proof that the act was beneficent is that the person who was whipped was supposed to give his whipper a treat afterwards!
Christians adapted these practices to their own holy season. In Orlagau, Germany, on St. Stephen’s day, girls would beat their parents and godparents with green fir-branches and menservants would beat their masters with rosemary sticks, saying:
Fresh green! Long life!
Give me a bright ___ [pick your treat]
In the same region, the boys got their turn on St. John’s Day. But in the Saxon Erzgebirge, it was the opposite: young men whipped women and girls on St. Stephen’s Day with bird-rods, preferably when they were still in bed, and on St. John’s Day the women paid the men back.
Childermas or Innocents’ Day, which we will examine in a later post, was an especially popular occasion for these customs. In parts of Germany, children used this day to beat passers-by with birch-boughs and be rewarded with apples, nuts, and other treats. But usually it was the children who got the short end of the stick, awakening on Childermas morning to a whipping from their parents in imitation of Herod’s cruelty to the innocent babes of Bethlehem.
St. John’s Day (December 27)
Like St. Stephen, St. John the Apostle and Evangelist is associated with charity, since his writings tenderly emphasize the love of God. John, in turn, was blessed by Christ’s special love for him. Though Our Lord made St. Peter the head of His Church, He retained a personal affection for the “beloved disciple.” This fondness is all the more endearing given the fact that Our Lord also referred to John and his older brother St. James the Great as “sons of thunder,” most likely for their fiery tempers.
In Vino Caritas
It has been said that St. John was the only Apostle who did not die a martyr because he had already testified to the Cross by standing at its foot with Mary, the Mother of God. Yet this does not mean that no attempts on his life were ever made. The saint’s most famous brush with death (as far as popular folklore is concerned) is when his enemies tried to kill him by poisoning his cup of wine. Some say that when the Divine John (as he is called in the East) made the sign of the cross over the cup, it split in half, thus spilling the poison. Others claim that his blessing neutralized the deadly beverage and allowed him to enjoy it unharmed.
Either way, it is the inspiration for a charming custom that almost literally toasts to the memory of the saint. The Catholic Church has a blessing of wine or cider specifically for this feast:
Benedícere et consecráre dignéris, Dómine Deus, déxtera tua hunc cálicem vini, et cujúslibet potus: et praesta; ut per mérita sancti Joannis Apóstoli et Evangelistae, omnes in te credentes et de cálice isto bibentes benedicantur, et protegantur. Et sicut beátus Joannes de cálice bibens venénum, illaesus omníno permansit, ita omnes, hac die in honórem beáti Joannis de cálice isto bibentes, méritis ipsíus ab omni aegritúdine venéni et noxiis quibusvis absolvantur, et córpore ac ánima se offerentes, ab omni culpa liberentur. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.
Amen.
Bénedic, Dómine, hanc creatúram potus: ut sit remedium salutáre ómnibus suméntibus: et praesta per invocatiónem sancti nóminis tui; ut, quicumque ex eo gustáverint, tam ánimae quam córporis sanitátem, te donante, percipiant. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.
Amen.
Et benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spíritus Sancti, descendat super hanc creatúram vini, et cujúslibet potus, et máneat semper. Amen.
Which I translate as:
O Lord God, deign to bless and consecrate with Thy right hand this cup of wine and of any drink whatsoever: and grant that by the merits of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist all who believe in Thee and who drink from this cup may be blessed and protected. And as Blessed John drank poison from the cup and remained completely unharmed, may all who drink from this cup on this day in honor of Blessed John be, by his merits, rescued from every sickness of poison and from every kind of harm; and, offering themselves up body and soul, may they be delivered from all fault. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Bless, O Lord, this drink, Thy creation: that it may be a salutary remedy for all who consume it: and grant through the invocation of Thy holy name that whoever tastes of it may, by Thy generosity, receive health of the soul as well as of the body. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
And may the blessing of almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, descend upon this wine, Thy creation, and upon any drink whatsoever, and remain forever. Amen.
It was once customary in Austria and other places to bring one’s beverage to church on this day so that the priest could give this blessing after Mass. Later that night, the wine is poured into everyone’s glass before dinner. The father then takes his glass, touches it to the mother’s and says, “I drink to you the love of St. John,” to which the mother replies, “I thank you for the love of St. John.” Both take a sip before the mother turns to the oldest child and repeats the ritual, at which point the child turns to the next oldest, etc. The last one to receive St. John’s love gives it back to the father, thus closing the family circle. The wine, of course, can also be mulled to combat the cold of winter.
And it need not all be consumed in one day. St. John’s wine was used throughout the year as a cure for illnesses or at weddings, as a protection against lightning (!), and as a preservative for one’s other wine (it was believed that by adding a dash of St. John’s wine to your other casks, the wine would be kept safe from harm).
It might seem odd to celebrate Saints’ days within the Octave of the Nativity, but the timing is deliberate. Immediately following Christmas Day are the feasts of several holy men known as the comites Christi, “the comrades of Christ.” As the name implies, these saints are somehow close to their Master and are thus distinguished by a certain nobility: the title of “count” is actually derived from the word comes. It was in function of this noble closeness that the Eastern churches once honored the Princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, on December 28.
During this same week the Western Church, on the other hand, honors St. Stephen (December 26), the first martyr in both act and desire and hence the first to be honored after Christmas; St. John the Evangelist (December 27), the disciple closest to Christ during the Last Supper; the Holy Innocents (December 28), close to the infant Jesus by their martyrdom; St. Thomas Becket (December 29), whose death at the hands of a Christian king on that day in 1170 so shocked Christendom that his feast day was given the privilege of being allowed to remain within the Christmas octave; and St. Sylvester (December 31), the Pope who lived to see the civic peace that ended the Roman persecutions and whose feast thus aptly gives voice to our prayers for the new civic year.
In this essay, let us turn our attention to the first count, Stephen.
A Model of Charity
St. Stephen, one of the first seven men ordained a deacon by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is called the “Proto-Martyr,” for in being stoned to death by order of the Sanhedrin, he was the first disciple to voluntarily shed his blood for the Faith. (Acts 6, 5 - 7, 59) He is a model of that divinely-infused love known in the Christian tradition as agape or caritas, that gift of God which in English we call “charity.” Charity’s divine origin cannot be overemphasized, for it is by no human love that someone can follow the example of our Savior and forgive the men murdering him. Yet as St. Luke tells us, as Stephen was dying, he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice: “‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’” (Acts 7, 59)
St. Stephen’s charity is not only a powerful example for us all but a cause for hope in obtaining his intercession. When St. Thomas More was responding to the newfangled heresies of Luther and Tyndale, which claimed the saints in Heaven did not want our prayers, he remarked:
We see that the nearer that folk draw [to Heaven], the more well disposed they are toward people here. And thus Saint Stephen, when he saw Heaven open for him... began to pray for them that maliciously killed him. And do we think, then, that being in Heaven he will not vouchsafe to pray for them that devoutly honor him, but has less love and charity being there than he had when going there? [1]
Further, as our Pope Emeritus makes clear in his encyclical Deus caritas est, true Christian charity bubbles over into good works for others. This is evident in Stephen’s life not only with his final act of forgiveness, but through his duties as a deacon, a holy order instituted by the Apostles for the service of the poor. (see Acts 6, 2)
St Stephen, by Carlo Crivelli, 1476
Liturgy
In the traditional Roman Rite prior to 1955, the feast of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr had a proper Mass on December 26 and on the octave day of January 2. In the Breviary, the feast featured psalm antiphons for Lauds that told the story of his martyrdom as well as proper antiphons for the Benedictus and Magnificat and a proper Collect. His cult was also recapitulated on August 3, the anniversary of the discovery of his relics.
Almsgiving
St. Stephen was a servant (a diakonos) who served the poor, and so it is appropriate that his feast day became the occasion for generosity to one’s subordinates and to the less fortunate. In England and the British Commonwealth, December 26 is known as Boxing Day--either because of a custom of giving one’s servants Christmas boxes for their journey home on their day off or because the poor boxes in the church were opened on this day and their contents given to the poor. [2] Even today it remains the customary occasion for giving gifts to one’s servants, paperboy, mailman, and so on.
Patronages
Because of his vocation, Stephen is the patron saint of deacons, and because of his martyrdom, he is the patron saint of occupations involving stones or stone-like substances such as stonemason, bricklayers, and builders.
Horses
But not all of Stephen’s patronages point so clearly to his life. The holy deacon is considered the patron saint of horses, despite the fact that he has no Scriptural connection to the equine. Some speculate that this association may have something to do with the relief from work that domestic animals, at the behest of St. Francis of Assisi, enjoyed during the twelve days of Christmas, but no one is certain.
In any case, the association stuck, especially in rural areas. Horse parades, horse races, and a “St. Stephen’s ride” in a sleigh or wagon were common, as was decorating one’s horse and riding it to the church for a blessing. Horse food (hay or oats) would also be blessed on this day, and so would salt and water in case the horse got sick. But this is not to say that horses enjoyed every aspect of the feast. In the same work quoted above, Thomas More’s interlocutor mentions that “on Saint Stephen’s feast day we must let all our horses’ blood with a knife, because Saint Stephen was killed with stones”! [3] Happily, the equestrian motif survives in less violent ways today. In several Catholic nations it is customary to bake special breads in the form of horseshoes to honor St. Stephen. [4]
Wrens
Another animal to get the short end of the stick on St. Stephen's Day was the wren. In the British Isles, the Druids sacrificed wrens around the time of the winter solstice. The bloody custom somehow evolved during the age of Christendom into groups of “Wren Boys” going from house to house carrying a dead wren on a brightly decorated branch: the boys would sing a song and receive a treat in return. The dead wren was then “stoned” in memory of St. Stephen--as if the poor bird had not suffered enough already.
Music
Christmastide would not be the same without its carols and hymns, nor would St. Stephen’s. There is an old Latin hymn used in the Divine Office of several medieval communities called Sancte Dei pretioseand a simple hymn in honor of the great deacon by Fr. C. Meyer, S.J., entitled, “Holy Stephen, Christ’s Dear Martyr.”
But the most famous hymn associated with St. Stephen’s Day is “Good King Wenceslas.” John Mason Neale was a talented English hymn writer and Anglican priest. As a member of the Oxford Movement, he was interested in reincorporating Catholic elements into the Church of England. In 1849 he published a book recounting the lives of holy men and women, including St. Wenceslaus I (d. 935), the Duke of Bohemia and patron of the Czech Republic, who was martyred by his wicked brother Boleslaw the Bad and whose feast day is September 28. Around 1853 Neale was given a rare copy of a Finnish song book from 1582 that contained a lively springtime carol from the thirteenth century. Set in doubled trochaic meter, it was called “Tempus Adest Floridum” or “Eastertime is Here.” Neale loved the tune, and in 1853 wrote his own lyrics based on the life of, you guessed it, good King Wenceslaus.
There is more than a passing connection between the saintly monarch and the great proto-martyr. “Good King Wenceslas” tells of how the king saw a poor peasant from his window in the dead of night and, in keeping with the theme of St. Stephen’s Day, immediately chased after him with food, drink, and firewood. When the king’s page complains that he cannot walk through the deep snow drifts any longer, the king tells him to follow in his footsteps. Hence the last verse:
In his master’s steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted.
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.
While the story is probably fictitious, it artfully combines what we do know about St. Wenceslas, such as his great charity for the poor and his custom of carrying firewood to them on his own back at night. But two of the verses in the last stanza are particularly telling. How could heat “be in the very sod/ Which the Saint had printed?” According to the Roman Breviary, one of the ways Wenceslas mortified his flesh was by walking barefoot in the snow until “his bloodstained footprints warmed the ground.”[6]
The footprints are heated, then, by the blood of the saint, whose sacrifices enables others to follow him. What a striking but beautiful image of self-giving for St. Stephen’s Day: a medieval king honoring an early saint with his mastery over the flesh and his love for the poor. And how inspiring this story is for us, the latest heirs of the Faith, to go and do likewise.
For more information on the Christmas season, see Michael Foley's latest book, Why We Kiss under the Mistletoe: Christmas Traditions Explained (Regnery, 2022). An earlier version of this article also appeared as “The Counts of Jesu Christo” in The Latin Mass magazine 17:5 (Advent/Christmas 2008), pp. 44-47. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its inclusion here.
Notes
[1] A Dialogue concerning Heresies, ed. Mary Gottschalk (New York: Scepter Publishers, 2006), p. 244.
[2] This, at least, is one of the theories about the origin of the name.
[3] p. 261. How prevalent this was is difficult to say, since the speaker is trying to bring up arguments against Catholic devotion and may therefore be exaggerating. But assuming that the custom existed, it probably tied into the medieval medical practice of leeching that was once believed to be beneficial to health.
[4] A recipe for one such treat, the Polish podkovy, is in Evelyn Vitz’s A Continual Feast (Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 156.
[5] The link for the hymn is: http://romaaeterna.jp/romanhmn/rh195.html. From the homepage (http:/romaaeterna.jp/) it can be found by clicking on the link “Blessed Virgin and other hymns.”
I always feel that the feast of the Beloved Disciple, the Eagle Evangelist, the Divine, the Theologian, the Seer of Patmos, ought to receive much more attention than it does. Part of the reason for that feeling might be personal: my wife and I chose this feastday for our nuptial High Mass twenty-three years ago. But it also has to do with my study of St. John’s Gospel and St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary thereupon, which is his most profound biblical work; it has to do with my brushing up against St. John nearly every day in the form of the Prologue that serves as the traditional Mass’s “epilogue.” And ever since I read Scott Hahn’s book The Supper of the Lamb, I have thought about St. John’s Book of Revelation as the template for Catholic liturgy.
As a church musician, it pains me that the feast of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents, indeed every day of the Christmas octave until the Circumcision, relatively rarely sees a sung Mass or a solemn Mass. Most clergy and musicians are exhausted after the liturgical (and other) excesses of Christmas, so church tends to be sparsely attended on these octave days. I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon during the octave of Easter. Even though each day of the octave has a splendid proper Mass, all of them graced with some of the most sublime chants of the entire repertoire, one will be lucky to see a motley group sprinkled in the church for low Mass. I wonder if it has been ever thus. Perhaps readers more knowledgeable of historical precedents regarding the observance of days within these two octaves could add some observations in the comments.
Fortunately, over the past three decades, I have been called upon, at one time or another, to sing Mass for most of these octave days, and thus have slowly become acquainted with their more exotic riches. Singing for the feast of St. Stephen last year, I was surprised by the challenge presented by the grand Offertory “Elegerunt Apostoli Stephanum levitam”—with its exultant flourishes on the words plenum fide and Domine Jesu, and its climbing figures on lapidaverunt and spiritum—and the equally grand Communion “Video caelos apertos.”
What really caught my attention was the fact that the same melody is used for the Alleluia on December 25th (Mass of the Day), December 26th, and December 27th, with only the words changing. In this way, the liturgy establishes a subtle but profound connection between these three feasts and their respective Gospels. The Christ-child, Word made flesh, the faithful witness, “the only man who was born to die” as Fulton Sheen once said, is accompanied in the Gospel procession by His first martyr, and by the virgin disciple who followed the Lamb whithersoever He went, even to the foot of the Cross and the empty tomb. The great light descends to the earth; the heavens are opened for the just; true testimony is borne to the Light who is the Life of men.
CHRISTMAS DAY
Dies sanctifícátus illúxit nobis: veníte, gentes, et adoráte Dóminum: quia hódie descéndit lux magna super terram. (A sanctified day hath shone upon us: come ye Gentiles and adore the Lord: for this day a great light hath descended upon the earth.) [The Gospel of the day is the Prologue of St. John.]
ST. STEPHEN
Video cælos apertos, et Jesum stantem a dextris virtutis Dei. (I see the heavens opened, and Jesus standing on the right hand of the power of God.) [The Gospel of the day is from Matthew 23, Christ's prophecy of the coming persecution of His disciples, and His lament over Jerusalem.]
ST. JOHN
Hic est discipulus ille, qui testamonium perhibet de his: et scimus, quia verum est testimonium ejus. (This is that disciple who giveth testimony of these things: and we know that his testimony is true.) [The Gospel is from John 21, the curious passage where St. Peter asks Jesus about John, and receives a response that is then said to be misinterpreted as John not dying.]
A pragmatically-minded person might point out that it’s also a mercy to the singers to give them the same melody three days in a row, so that if they are going to sing all these Masses right after Christmas, some of the weight has been lifted off their shoulders. How like the tradition of the Church, to do something at once so beautiful and so practical!
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