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Today in the Orthodox/Byzantine liturgical calendar, two days after Christmas (NC), we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen. It’s not one day after Christmas, as it is in Western Christian traditions. (It’s known as ‘Boxing Day’ in the UK, named not after the age-old sport of punching each other in the face, but after the alms-‘boxes’ in British churches, from which alms would be given to the poor on December 26, in honor of the first Christian martyr who was known for his charitable acts.) But in the above-quoted Kontakion of St. Stephen’s Day, we can see that it presumes that Christmas was ‘yesterday,’ and that St. Stephen the Protomartyr was stoned and is celebrated ‘today,’ one day after Christmas. Why, then, do we in the Orthodox/Byzantine calendar celebrate his day two days after Christmas? Because we moved his original, December 26 feast-day up one day, at some point.
Originally, in both East and West we celebrated St. Stephen one day after Christmas. His December 26 feast-day originates in Jerusalem in the year 415, when the relics of St. Stephen were discovered and placed in the church at Sion. I don’t know when, exactly, his feast-day was moved to the second day after Christmas, but I presume this happened to make room for what we in the Orthodox/Byzantine calendar now celebrate one day after Christmas, - the ‘Synaxis’ (‘liturgical gathering’) of the Theotokos, which is of later origin than the December 26 feast of Stephen. I suspect that the feast of the Synaxis of the Theotokos comes from Great Church of Constantinople, but I haven’t researched the matter.
In any event, we can see from this example that the Orthodox/Byzantine tradition is not the one that ‘ never changed anything,’ as some of us are wont to think. And that’s not a bad thing; it’s just a thing. The liturgical calendar changed and developed throughout history, as prominent liturgical centers like Constantinople and Rome either gained or lost influence over the more peripheral local traditions. The December 25 date for Christmas itself comes from Rome to the Byzantine East in the late 4th century, in case anyone didn’t know that. But these are just some fun facts I wanted to share with you on this Saturday, and forgive me for not reflecting on the profound text of the Kontakion, which offers so much food for thought, on how we are ‘perfected,’ in body and soul, by witnessing joyously to Christ in all circumstances. Happy third day of Christmas, and/or St. Stephen’s Day, or (to Older Calendar folks) – happy upcoming Sunday of the Forefathers! (Above is a photo of the site of St. Stephen’s stoning near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem)
