Just a random thought on boxing day: on Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, Easter his resurrection, and Pentecost the coming of the holy spirit upon the apostles. But what do Christians celebrate on the respective second days of those holidays? I was raised Catholic, but I’ve never really thought or known about it.
December 26th is the Feast Day of the Innocents:
I believe that is December 28th, the day Spain [ETA: and South America] makes the kind of jokes you make on April 1st. December 26th is San Esteban (Saint Stephen)
The children slaughtered by Herod? Didn’t that happen quite longer after Jesus’ birth?
ETA: just saw that you edited in the wiki link, so the question is kinda moot.
Quite right! My mistake!
« Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the Feast of Stephen… »
Stephen being the Proto-Martyr.
And then Christmas is the beginning of Christmastide. In the Anglican and Lutheran traditions, that is the Twelve Days of Christmas, culminating on Twelfth Night, the Adoration of the Magi:
And yes, that is out if sequence, since the Massacre if the Innocents occurred after the Magi arrived and left.
In all these cases it is the second day of Christmastide/Eastertide/etc., commemorations that liturgically are not just the one day.
But making a big deal of it and even having an official civil holiday or a church Holiday of Obligation seems more culturally and nationally determined – for instance I grew up in a Catholic-dominant culture (Puerto Rico) and never marked the Feast of Stephen as anything beyond just that and another day of Christmastide; nor did we mark or observe Easter or Pentecost Mondays as anything particularly notable, and none of them were Holidays of Obligation.
I suppose the nominal “fanwank” sequence would be 25 December Y-year Jesus Born, 6 January Magi show up, 28 December of Y-year+1, Herod does his villainy (thus: “all boys under age 2”). The Western popular culture compresses the nativity stories to have the whole shebang happening within the confines of Xmas Eve/Xmas, but in fact the gospel provides for more than that (and the Magi are not at mangerside in Luke’s, they find the family in a proper house in Matthew’s).
Reading the Wiki article, it’s interesting how the majority of biblical scholars regard the story as a myth yet
Against this majority opinion some argue for the historicity of the event. R. T. France, while acknowledging that the massacre is “perhaps the aspect [of Matthew’s infancy narrative] most often rejected as legendary” [9] and that the story is similar to that of Moses, believes that it would not have arisen without historical basis.[10] Everett Ferguson argues that the story makes sense in the context of Herod’s reign of terror in the last few years of his rule…
then further on the estimates of the dead children range from a couple dozen to 144,000.
Sure sounds like an ass-pull to me.
Well, at least in Germany, the 26th of December and Easter and Pentecost Mondays are all official civil holidays.
December 26th is also the Feast of the Holy Family, in Roman Catholicism.
Roman Catholic tradition, too. On the liturgical calendar, Christmas and Easter aren’t days, but seasons, portions of the year set apart from “Ordinary Time”. December 25th and Easter Sunday are merely the first days of those seasons. (That is why, incidentally, Catholics don’t sing Christmas hymns during Mass until the 25th. Because the four Sundays previous are their own separate season of Advent.)
In addition to the good answers already given, another is nothing. For most christians* I know, Christmas is one day long (a day and a half if you count Christmas Eve). So is Easter (a long weekend notwithstanding). Pentecost often isn’t even on their radar.
* These christians are primarily of a fundamentalist protestant stripe.
There is a very wide variety of practices between (and sometimes in) various denominations. Low-church Christians typically pay little or no attention to the liturgical calendar.
Herod did a number of ugly things. Like the slander of a number of Roman emperors, some of it may be exaggerations cooked up by his enemies, media reporting and fact-checking of the day being sadly lacking. IIRC, Josephus who wrote the definitive history of the Jewish rulers never mentions the Slaughter of the Innocents; you would think the slaughter of hundreds or thousands of babies would be high on the list of “Bad Things Herod Did for 1000, Alex” but outside of the gospels, no contemporaries mention a peep of it. It’s right out of the “humble beginnings” legends playbook for every folk hero, the first danger they evade. (Along with “descended from noble blood”)
A distinction that’s lost on most people, because most people would consider Advent songs to also be “Christmas songs”.
And while December 26 is the Feast of Stephen, that’s not really a big deal, given that every day of the year is the feast day of some saint or another. Or more precisely, the feast day of several saints, since there are a lot more than 365 canonized saints.
Yeah, Herod was quite capable of doing evil crap like that, and if it was only like a couple dozen that explains why it was never a big deal,
However, there was a popular joke at Herods expense about pigs being safer than children, …
by the time his reign came to an end, Herod was a depressed old man of 70, plagued with illness and the incessant disputes within his large family—he had in all, 10 wives and 19 children… Herod’s suspicions bordered on paranoia. He killed his own wife… and at a later date, her adult sons Alexander and Aristobulos… (the Emperor) Augustus made the grim joke that it was safer to be Herod’s pig[1] than Herod’s son. Josephus - the 1st century Historian - commented that Herod had ‘an evil nature, relentless in punishment and unsurpassing in action against the objects of his hatred.’” [2]
So Herod was up to killing a couple dozen little known peasant boys in a little known backwater village. That doesn’t mean it did happen, of course, just that it could have happened.
Sure, but a dozen or two? Meh.
From wiki- Everett Ferguson argues that the story makes sense in the context of Herod’s reign of terror in the last few years of his rule,[11] and the number of infants in Bethlehem that would have been killed – no more than a dozen or so – may have been too insignificant to be recorded by Josephus, who could not be aware of every incident far in the past when he wrote it.[12]
But doesn’t Christmastide go on longer in the Catholic calendar? In the Anglican calendar, it ends with Epiphany, which is a separate season.
And same for Advent in the Anglican communion - it’s purple / Sarum blue, and no Christmas songs. The most common Advent hymn in the Anglican calendar is “O Come O come Emmanuel”, in a minor key. Not a Christmas carol.
Nope. Ends at Epiphany, same as with the Episcopalians. Then Ordinary Time, until Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.
The Monday after Easter is called Dyngus day and is celebrated in Cleveland
Yeah, but that’s not a religious holiday, per se; it’s a cultural holiday celebrating Polish-Americans.
Wikipedia led me astray! Dammit!