St. Stephen’s Feast Day: A Mandate for Generosity

Good King Wenceslas on St. Stephen’s Day December 26

St. Stephen stars in two Christmas traditions that I’d never thought about: the English carol Good King Wenceslas and Boxing Day.

Both, I recently learned, put St. Stephen’s example, as the generous servant to the needy, to work on his feast day. In the 1853 carol, based on a Czech poem published in translation in 1847, a mythical Bohemian king sets a daunting example to take needed goods to a remote impoverished peasant he sees on St. Stephen’s feast day. The elderly ruler hikes miles through heavy snow carrying supplies, urging his struggling younger page forward in his deep footprints.

Boxing Day follows through in our own world. It marks a time to package and deliver goods to the needy on St. Stephen’s feast day, like Wenceslas, a legacy of the medieval tradition of opening the church’s alms box for distribution.

Someday I hope to know about any ties between Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol (published 1843) and this later carol. Oh yes, then there’s St. Nicholas.

In the meantime, think about Stephen and Wenceslas as you join the choir included here. Happy holidays!

—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator