The Third Day of Christmas

Today is the Third Day of Christmas.  It is also the Feast of St. Stephen or St. Stephen’s Day according to the Eastern Church.  But the Western Church celebrates it on December 26, which was yesterday.  However, yesterday I was blogging about Boxing Day, which is a holiday that people I know celebrate.  I don’t actually know anyone who celebrates St. Stephen’s Day, therefore I thought Boxing Day was a little more important to blog about.  Besides, some people in the world celebrate it today.

I don’t know anything more about it than what the Wikipedia article has to say.  I linked to it, above, so you should check it out–then you’ll know what I know.

This holiday commemorates St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  For those of you who don’t remember, Stephen was a first century Jewish Christian who refused to recant when ordered to do so by the Jewish authorities.  So they decided to put him to death–by stoning.  (Historical note: Christianity at this time was considered a sect of Judaism, the religion of the Jews.  The Jews were part of the Roman Empire.  The Romans at this time still believed in religious freedom which meant local peoples got to manage their own religions including imposing the death penalty–the manner of execution was limited though.  For the Jews this meant they could stone someone for being a heretic or blasphemer.  This is what happened to Stephen.)  An interesting part of the story is the account of a young man who “held the coats” of those doing the stoning.  This man’s name was Saul.  He later converted to Christianity, changed his name to Paul, and went on to become a great evangelist and missionary and wrote many of the books of the New Testament.  He was also an incredible intellectual–read some of his epistles–you’ll see what I mean.  The story of Stephen can be found in Acts 6:8-8:2. (Click here for Acts 6, Acts 7, and Acts 8.)  The story of Saul’s conversion can be found in Acts 9:1-22.

I also found it interesting that the Christmas Carol “Good King Wenceslas” takes place on this day (actually December 26).  (Scroll down to the bottom of the above link for the lyrics.)  This is intersting to me, personally, because in my family it became a tradition to watch a low budget movie called Good King Wenceslas.  In it Wenceslas is a prince, not a king yet, and he has to save his kingdom from the machinations of his evil step-mother, or he never will be king.  And along the way he helps the poor.  As I said, the movie is low-budget, so it does leave a lot to be desired, but we liked it.  (At first we liked to make fun of it, but then it became a tradition to watch it.)  The humor in it appeals to us and there’s some good lines of dialogue in it.  My personal favorite is, “You’re right, Sire, the horse is prettier.”  And Nathan’s is “‘Fortunate wolves.”  If you haven’t seen it, you won’t know what that means.  Sorry about that–I’d give you some context, but it’s been some time since I watched it.  I can at least give you context for the first; my brother will have to leave the context for the second in comments.

The context: The stepmother arranges a marriage for Prince Wenceslas.  She has no intention of letting either him or the girl live after the wedding–but the girl’s father is rich and she wants the dowry.  Wenceslas wants no part of the marriage.  When the girl first meets Wenceslas, he pretends to be a stableboy.  She asks him questions about the prince, including what he looks like.  Wenceslas replies, “The horse is prettier.”  Later, when she finds out who he is and that he lied to her about his identity, she is angry and tells him, “You’re right, Sire, the horse is prettier.”

We saw it on TV and taped it off the TV back in the days of VHS.  I highly doubt it was ever released on DVD or that it’s available for sale anywhere.  (Here is the Amazon.com link for it.  It is currently unavailable.)  It was of too poor quality for any of that, although there is some good acting and dialogue in it and several reviewers on the aforementioned site did like it.  However, if I’m to ever have a copy of it, to carry on the family tradition, or if you were curious about it, we’d need our own copy.  Personally, I think somebody (maybe one of my brothers–Timothy or Nathan) should put it on the Internet and give it away free.  (I don’t think anyone would actually pay money for it.)  There’s a lot said and done these days concerning Internet piracy and copyright infringement, but whatever the lawyers might say, I don’t believe there’d be anything wrong with putting this movie on the Internet.  It’s not like whoever produced it is getting paid for it or would be getting paid for it or is expecting to get any kind of payment for it.  So no one’s lost anything.  And if they think they have–well, that’s the same as saying there’s no market for a product, so you won’t produce it or offer it for sale, and then when someone else proves you wrong complain that they’re smarter than you and demand they compensate you for marketing a product you didn’t think you could market.  Sorry, folks.  Life doesn’t work that way, or at least it shouldn’t.

But enough about Internet piracy and copyright.  That’s a post–probably several–for another time.

Today is the Third Day of Christmas.  And since somehow I skipped it yesterday, we’ll do both today:

On the Second Day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Two turtledoves
(And a partridge in a pear tree.)

On the Third day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Three French hens
(Two turtledoves
And a partridge in a pear tree.)

I hope you all are enjoying this holiday season!