Christmas Every Day

The Feast of Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia or Lucy was a Christian virgin of Catania, Sicily who was martyred in the persecutions of the late third century. After various travels her relics ended up in Venice where the song “Santa Lucia” is part of the repertoire of singing gondoliers to this day. Because her feast day fell on December 13, the date of the winter solstice before calendar reform, her legend became entwined with the midwinter festivals of various parts of Europe. In Sweden the story is told of a terrible famine in the Middle Ages which was relieved by the arrival of a ship bearing food and a beautiful, radiant woman in white at the helm; in Syracuse, Sicily they speak of a famine in the midst of which folk went to the church of St Lucia to pray whereupon a grain ship sailed into the harbour. In both Italy and Sweden she represents light and the promise of the renewal of spring. Some scholars say that the Swedish version of Lucia is actually a descendant of the Christ Child who was the Protestant Reformation’s replacement for St Nicholas. The Christkindl in Germany, where many of Sweden’s Christmas customs originated, was often depicted as a white-clad young girl and it is said that this figure was adopted by Swedes in the west part of the country to personify the celebrations that traditionally began on December 13. By the early twentieth century Lucia was a popular figure all across the country.

In Sweden on December 13 a “Lucy Bride”, a girl dressed in white with a red sash and a crown of candles and lingon berries, has ceremonial responsibilities. In the home she will bring coffeee and cakes to her parents. In schools or public institutions she leads a parade of similarly-clad young women and Star Boys. Across Europe, December 13 will be a time of bonfires and torchlit parades. In the Tyrol Lucia is a gift-bringer who delivers presents to girls while St Nicholas attends to the boys.

There is a dark side as well to the Lucia figure. Because the depths of midwinter are believed to be a time of increased demonic activity, Lucia is sometimes identified with witches or monsters. In parts of Germany she is the Lutzelfrau, a witch who rides the winds and has to be bribed with gifts; in some parts of central Europe Lucy takes the form of a nanny goat rewarding good children and threatening to disembowel the bad. In Norway she is quick to punish those who dare work on her day, and sn Iceland she is identified as an ogre. The night before her feast day is therefore held to be a good time for ceremonies to drive away evil spirits with lights, noise and incense. At midnight, Austrians believed that a special light, the Luzieschein, appeared outdoors and would reveal the future to those brave enough to seek it out.

627

Battle of Nineveh.

Emperor Heraclius defeats the Persians and saves eastern Christianity.

Early in the seventh century things looked pretty bad for the Byzantine empire, beset by pagan Slavs and Bulgars to the west and by Persian Zoroastrians on their eastern borders. The capital, Constantinople, was under siege and with the help of Jewish rebels, Persians had conquered much of the Levant. In 614 they took Jerusalem and captured the holiest of relics, the True Cross on which Jesus had been crucified.

While the great walls of Constantinople resisted the besieging armies, Heraclius led a force deep into the Persian empire. On this date in 627 he defeated a Persian army led by their emperor Khosrau II and precipitated a civil war in which Khosrau was deposed and Persia accepted terms to end the war. All conquered territories were returned to the Byzantines as was the True Cross which Heraclitus returned to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Heraclius had saved the empire from attack but he failed to bring about religious unity with his theological compromises. In a few years Muslim armies would explode out of Arabia, overwhelm the exhausted Persians and conquer most of the territory Heraclius had fought for. It would take them another 800 years, however, to win Constantinople.

1964

A step toward the end of the Great Schism.

When the Roman empire in the west fell to Germanic barbarians in the 400s, the Christian church was still largely a single body of belief and administration. However, over the next 600 years, eastern and western Christianity grew farther apart, separating slowly on issues of doctrine and politics. The two sides disagreed on whether clergy should marry, the date of Easter, the type of bread used at the Eucharist, whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father or the Father and Son and how the sign of the cross was to be made. The western church spoke Latin and conducted its services in that language; the easterners spoke Greek but allowed local languages to be used in church. The west looked for leadership to the Bishop of Rome and the German emperor; the east had the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Byzantine emperor.

In 1054, the papal delegate to the east laid a bill of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia while the Patriarch countered by excommunicating the westerners. Though these decrees were meant to be aimed at particular people and as short-term maneuvers, historians date this as the beginning of the Great Schism, a division between a Catholic and an Orthodox Church. Numerous attempts were made during the Middle Ages to reconcile the two sides but as the Byzantine empire was fading in strength these attempts usually took the form of demanding that the eastern church surrender to the pope’s authority. In 1453 when Islam overwhelmed Constantinople and last remnants of the eastern empire were extinguished, the cry in the Orthodox camp was still “better a turban than a tiara” (better to have Muslim rule than papal domination).

In 1964 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenogoras I simultaneously read a message of reconciliation in Rome and Constantinople (called Istanbul by the Turks). The two apologized for hostile words by both sides over the centuries, voided the excommunications, and wished for a new era of cooperation, hoping

that this act will be pleasing to God, who is prompt to pardon us when we pardon each other. They hope that the whole Christian world, especially the entire Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church will appreciate this gesture as an expression of a sincere desire shared in common for reconciliation, and as an invitation to follow out in a spirit of trust, esteem and mutual charity the dialogue which, with Gods help, will lead to living together again, for the greater good of souls and the coming of the kingdom of God, in that full communion of faith, fraternal accord and sacramental life which existed among them during the first thousand years of the life of the Church.

1854

An Immaculate Conception?

On this date in 1854 Pope Pius IX issued the bull Ineffabilis Deus which proclaimed:

We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.

The belief that the Virgin Mary, alone of all humankind, had been conceived without sin had long been discussed in the church. The longstanding veneration of Mary, the use of the term “Theotokos” or “God-Bearer” and the celebration of her conception on December 8 led some by the thirteenth century to proclaim that she was ever sinless. The notion of an “immaculate conception” was opposed by Dominicans such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas but the doctrine was supported by Franciscans, particularly in Britain. Protestant reformers were willing to view Mary as personally without sin but denied that her conception was free of the taint of human corruption.

Pope Pius’s declaration was strengthened by the apparition of the Virgin to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes in 1858. The female form which Bernadette claimed to see announced, “I am the Immaculate Conception”. The feast on December 8 is a national holiday in some Catholic countries and is especially celebrated in Portugal and parts of Latin America.

December 4

Feast of Saint Barbara

Barbara is the patron saint of blowing things up. One of the legendary martyr-virgins of the pre-Constantinian period, Barbara was placed in a tower by her father (and is thus often depicted in art with such a structure.) She rejected marriage and when her father learned she was a Christian he attempted to kill her. Miraculously she was transported to a mountainous region where she was betrayed to the authorities by a shepherd. Roman officials tortured her but she clung to her Christian faith and performed miracles. Finally she was beheaded by her father who was shortly struck dead by lightning.

Probably because of the manner of her father’s death, she is the patron saint of artillerymen, armourers, gunsmiths, miners and those with dangerous work. When the great Rialto Fire of 1514 broke out in Venice, the head of St Barbara was paraded “around the burning areas because it was believed to have great preventive powers in such matters.” Alas, it availed naught. It is still customary in many places to put an image of St Barbara at the entrance to new tunnels that are being dug.

In Europe it is customary to take the branch of a fruit tree and bring it indoors on St Barbara’s Day. Placed in a vase of water it should blossom on Christmas.

1552

Death of the Apostle of the Indies.

Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta, better known as Francis Xavier, was born in 1506 to a noble family of the Kingdom of Navarre, in what is now the Basque country of northwestern Spain. He studied in Paris where he met Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. This acquaintance drew him into the priesthood and into the first small cadre of members of the Jesuit order.

In 1540 the King of Portugal asked for missionaries to be sent to India where Portugal was carving out a commercial empire and Francis was chosen to lead this mission. He first based himself in Goa on the west coast of India but travelled widely though the south of the subcontinent and Sri Lanka. Casting his eyes farther east he travelled to Portuguese outposts in what is now Indonesia, southern China and Japan. In 1552 he died in China and his body was taken back to India where it is buried in splendour in Goa. (His right arm was detached and sent to the Jesuit church in Rome.)

Not only was Francis the pioneer of Catholic missions in much of Asia but he and his successors conceived of the notion of indigenous presentation, putting forth the Gospel in terms the locals could culturally understand. In India Jesuits would dress as high-caste Hindus, in China as imperial mandarins; in Canada the story of the Nativity was expressed in native terms, such as in the “Huron Carol”. Sometimes this went too far as in China where the Jesuits were accused of presenting the doctrine of the Mass in terms of ancestor worship.

Francis was canonized in 1622 and is the patron saint of Navarre, foreign missions, navigators, India and Japan.

1581

Execution of Edmund Campion. When Catholic Europe realized that England’s Queen Elizabeth I meant to put her country in the Protestant camp, all manner of attempts were made to reverse that decision. Nobles from the conservative north of the country rose in rebellion. Plots were launched to kill Elizabeth and put a Catholic ruler, possibly Mary Queen of Scots, on the throne. In 1570 the pope sanctioned Elizabeth’s overthrow in a bull entitled Regnans in Excelsis. Catholic clergymen fled to the Continent and established English-speaking seminaries to train the next generation of priests. All of this convinced the English government that Catholicism and treachery were synonymous. After a decade of winking at the refusal of Catholics to worship in the Anglican fashion, Elizabeth cracked down on the beleaguered minority that clung loyally to Rome. Especially harsh were the laws against the presence of Catholic priests who had smuggled themselves back into England.

One of the most prominent of those men was Edmund Campion, born 1541. He was a brilliant student at Oxford early in the reign of Elizabeth and was ordained a priest in the Church of England. His doubts about Protestantism grew to the point that he left his country and was received into the Catholic church in France at an English college run by Jesuits. Studies in Rome led to his becoming a Jesuit priest in 1578. Two years later the Jesuits began to smuggle English-language missionaries back into England. They were instructed to avoid any political involvement or pass judgement on Elizabeth’s right to the throne and were to concentrate on bolstering the Catholic community who had to worship in secret.

With great boldness (and perhaps little wisdom) Campion published two challenges to the English church, printed on clandestine presses. The first was known as Campions Brag, announcing the Jesuit mission and denying any treasonous intent, and the second was a Latin tract Decem Rationes (“Ten Reasons”) attacking the Anglican settlement. This public challenge led the government to put a great effort into finding him. Within a month of his arrival he was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. There he was both tortured, wooed with promises of freedom and high position, and allowed to debate Protestant theologians.

In 1581 he was put on trial for political crimes and plotting the overthrow of the Queen. On December 1 of that year he was hanged and disemboweled along with two other Catholic priests. He was canonized in 1970.

1559

A challenging sermon.

When the young king Edward VI died in 1553, England was, on paper at least, a Protestant country, with a Book of Common Prayer, services in English and married clergy. However, the new ruler, Mary I, was a Catholic who returned England to the Roman Catholic allegiance and persecuted her religious opponents, earning herself the nickname of Bloody Mary. Many Protestant clergymen fled to the Continent to save their lives and await a change on the throne. This occurred in late 1558 when Mary died, to be succeeded by her Protestant sister Elizabeth. The new queen had to replace virtually all of the high ecclesiastical office holders, dispensing with the services of those who clung to Catholicism, and restock the universities and pulpits with reliable men of her faith. No one was quite sure, however, what sort of faith that was – the Queen abolished many Catholic practices but retained a lot of ceremony and the office of bishops. Radical Protestants, later to be known as Puritans, wanted a more complete reformation such as existed in Switzerland but it seemed that Elizabeth preferred a “middle way”. On this day in 1559 England heard a sermon which would lead to the explanation of this new religious path.

It was delivered by John Jewell outside of Old St Paul’s Cathedral. Jewell had fled the Marian persecution and spent years in Protestant cities on the Continent. When he returned at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, he found that some of his more radical fellow exiles were out of favour with the Queen but he was given a plum post at the cathedral and later the bishopric of the rich diocese of Salisbury. In his sermon he challenged Catholic theologians to prove their claims, not out of tradition or papal decrees but out of Scripture, the first ecumenical Councils and the Fathers of the early Church. When his sermon challenge drew fire he wrote Apologia ecclesiae Anglicanae, a basic exposition and defence of the English church settlement. Queen Elizabeth ordered a copy of the Apology placed in every parish church and it became the standard statement of Anglicanism for decades.

Jewell’s work was written in Latin so that every European intellectual and theologian could read it. Many did; the Council of Trent condemned it and some leading English Catholics (themselves now in exile) wrote against Jewell. One was Thomas Harding who penned An Answer to Doctor Jewel’s Challenge (1564), to which Jewell replied (1565); then Harding published a Confutation of an Apology (1566) and was answered again by Jewell in a Defense of the Apology (1567) to which Harding replied in A Detection of Sundry Foul Errors, Lies, Slanders, Corruptions, and other False Dealings, touching Doctrine and other matters uttered and practised by M. Jewel (1568), such tit for tat debate being the accepted, if tedious, method of the day.

The Feast of St Catherine of Alexandria.

Catherine, if legend is to be believed, was a beautiful and intelligent virgin during the time of the most intense persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor, around the year 300. She presented herself to the emperor Maximinus and castigated him for his murderous behaviour. When he produced a group of philosophers to demonstrate that her religious beliefs were false she defeated them in debate; astonished, many of them converted to Christianity and were executed for so doing. When members of the court came to view this young intellectual marvel, they too were converted by her eloquence and they too suffered martyrdom. Finally, the emperor ordered her broken on the wheel but the wheel broke when she was laid upon it. In the end, she was beheaded, whereupon angels took her body to Mt Sinai where today her relics can be seen at St Catherine’s monastery.

She is the patron saint of young women (and as such was a magical Christmas gift-bringer to girls, in much the same line as St Nicholas), of philosophers and those whose work involves wheels – watchmakers, for example. Her symbol, or attribute, is the wheel which is portrayed as broken. In the picture above, as is customary in religious art, Catherine is carrying the instrument which killed her (a sword). Beside her is a palm branch, symbolic of martyrdom.

851

The Martyrs of Cordoba

In 711 a Muslim army of North African Arabs and Berbers crossed into Spain and within a few years extinguished the Visigothic kingdom, leaving Christian rulers holding on only to an enclave in the mountainous northwest. In time this Muslim conquest became the sophisticated Umayyad caliphate with its capital at Cordoba. The Jewish and Christian population was allowed a degree of local self-government and permitted to carry on their worship, subject to payment of a tax and certain legal restrictions that kept them in a state of social inferiority. There was no forced conversion but the burdensome laws made it attractive for many to adopt Islam. In 851 an astonishing series of voluntary martyrdoms was carried out in order to demonstrate that there were still Christians who were willing to die for their faith and to serve as an example to their weaker-minded coreligionists.

This phenomenon began with a monk named Isaac who had once served the caliphate as a trusted civil servant. In June 851 he publicly denounced Muhammed and Islam. For this blasphemy he was beheaded and his body hung by the feet for others to contemplate the fate of those who challenged the Prophet. The caliph Abd ar-Rahman II threatened the same punishment to any Christian who followed Isaac’s example. Two days later, Sanctius, a young soldier, did exactly that and was decapitated. Within days he was followed by another six who presented themselves to the Muslim authorities and proclaimed “We abide by the same confession, O judge, that our most holy brothers Isaac and Sanctius professed. Now hand down the sentence, multiply your cruelty, be kindled with complete fury in vengeance for your prophet. We profess Christ to be truly God and your prophet to be a precursor of Antichrist and an author of profane doctrine.” They too were duly executed.

The caliph further responded by imprisoning the Christian community’s leadership, which slowed, but did not halt the voluntary martyrdoms — nor were they halted by appeals from Christian clergy. Collective punishments of Christians followed: many lost official positions, churches were destroyed, harsh laws were strictly enforced. The self-sacrifices continued throughout the decade with 48 people, men and women, dying for professing their faith. On this day in 851, two women, Flora and Maria, were killed for blasphemy and apostasy.