The Feast of Stephen
And the bizarre carol of Good King Wenceslas
Welcome back to the Almanac! Hope your advent is going well, full of expectation and excitement. Mine is, partly because of my new one-man touring show for 2025, God, the Bible and Everything (in 60 Minutes). I’ve been using AI to generate some graphics.
I’m going to promote the show to lots of churches from January, so if you want your pick of dates for 2025, now is the time to get in touch. I’m also releasing all the available dates for 2025, up until December, so you could get first choice by getting your enquiry in before Christmas.
Anyway, on with the Almanac!
26th December is St Stephen’s Day. In England, this has been eclipsed by Christmas Day on 25th and the following day being known as Boxing Day. Much has been written on almsgiving and ‘boxes’ of Boxing Day. I’m more interested in the Feast of St Stephen.
The ‘Feast of Stephen’ is already associated with Christmas in our minds because of the jaunty Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslas”. This sounds good when sung with gusto in the streets. Less so when sung in a Church Christmas service since it’s not about Christmas at all. We are fooled by the reference to snow, “deep and crisp and even”, in the first verse, but has no connection to the Christmas story, like another snowy carol “In the bleak midwinter” based on a poem by Christina Rossetti which gets very Christian and Christmassy after the first verse.
The contradictions within “Good King Wenceslas”, however, continue. Wenceslas, considered a saint in Bohemia for his acts of charity, was not actually a king, but a Duke. He was a vigorous advocate for the Christian faith in the tenth century, until his untimely martyrdom in 935.
The curious carol to the “Good King” emerged from a member of the Oxford Movement, looking to augment the status of saints in the Church of England’s calendar. In this, his success was mixed since the song entirely eclipses Stephen and focusses on St Wenceslas, who is commemorated on the date of his martyrdom: 28 September. So it might make more sense to sing the carol on that day.
But we can’t. We associate the tune with Christmas. Except it isn’t. It’s a traditional tune taken from a spring dance. The resulting carol is described in the Penguin Book of Christmas Carols as the "product of an unnatural marriage between Victorian whimsy and the thirteenth-century dance carol."
So let’s start again, shall we?
Who is St Stephen? And why is he commemorated on 26th December?
Stephen is the very first Christian martyr, one of seven men appointed to be a deacon in Acts 6 to administer the daily distribution of food to widows. Stephen, however, was gifted by God to do signs and wonders. And, exactly as happened with Jesus, the miracles immediately aroused criticism, opposition and hatred.
Let’s pause for a moment to note this. The miracles themselves are never challenged or called fraudulent. The opposition to Jesus and Stephen was theological and personal. The efficacy of the miracles seems to make no difference. Seeing is not believing, neither back then or today, an age where we are urged to ‘trust the science’. Scientists don’t trust the science. New ways of thinking, backed up by evidence and data, is surprisingly unpersuasive, especially to scientists. New theories only establish themselves by the death of the previous generation of scientists. It’s called Planck’s principle after the theoretical physicist, Max Planck, who wrote:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Rather pleasingly for our purposes here he also says:
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul.
Who witnessed the stoning of Stephen? Saul (Acts 8:1). It is not clear if Saul had also witnessed Stephen’s famous last words, which are not exactly pithy. They form the longest sermon in Acts. The climax is chapter and verse on the historic and continual rejection of true prophets and the Messiah by… well, I’ll let Stephen speak for himself:
You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.” (Acts 7:51-53)
No-one could accuse Stephen of being winsome. Perhaps his friends winced as he spoke, and then held their heads in their hands as he went on to say he could see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.
At this point Stephen’s haters slapped their hands over their ears in a manner reminiscent of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. So offended are they by the accusation of being murderers, they take Stephen out of the city and murder him. It’s not really an execution. There is no trial or due process. As he is stoned to death, Stephen commended his spirit to the Lord Jesus and cried out for his stoners’ sins not to be held against him.
This is all pretty good going for a lowly deacon working in a food bank for widows. But what’s a lesson for us to learn here?
The first is to note the fruit that springs from a faithful care for widows. Involvement in caring for those around is something we can all do. Not only is it a great to do, but God uses it to bring about even greater things.
But what about Stephen? What can we learn from him? Let’s pick one thing that we, at least, are able to emulate today: Stephen was faithful to Jesus Christ, as was Christ himself to the will of his Father. Stephen was faithful and left everything else in His hands.
What were the results of this spectacle that I’m sure many other Christians deemed embarrassing and unnecessary? The apostles were scattered, the word was spread, sorcerers and Ethiopian eunuchs came to know Christ, and the disciples were made of the nations, as Jesus had commanded.
Jesus doesn’t tell us to do things we can’t do. (There’s a rather lovely book about this called Impossible Commands. That might be some good new year’s reading). Jesus tells us to do plenty of things we won’t do – like love our enemies – or don’t believe to be possible – like make disciples of all nations.
Jesus also tells us to take up our cross and follow him. Stephen was prepared to do just that.
What else happened in the wake of this? A spiritual singularity: Saul become Paul. According to theoretical physicist Max Planck, that’s a real miracle.
In 415, a priest is said to have been given the location of Stephen's remains in a dream, and they were taken to the Church of Hagia Sion on 26th December that year. That’s why the Feast of Stephen is the day after Christmas Day.
Why not honour Stephen on 26th December by reading aloud his sermon from Acts 7? In full. It’s Boxing Day! What else do you have to do?
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Have a very merry Christmas!
Delightful @James.
"Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised." Um, excuse me?