Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.
Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.
Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Today’s theme is St. Stephen’s Day.
Today is Boxing Day in much of the Anglosphere and I, your intrepid investigator of all—okay, most—things Christmas, am proud to report that this is not an annual outbreak of pugilism nor hooliganism. Also, the Boxer Rebellion had nothing to do with a sudden, violent change in societal expectations about male undergarments but did involve boxers, boxers in this case being Chinese rebels skilled in the art of Kung Fu.
True story.
Anywho, St. Stephen’s Day is celebrated on December 26th. Or the 27th. Or January 9th. Look, it depends on the variety of Christianity one practices and whether or not the variety in question calculates using the Gregorian Calendar or not, okay?
St. Stephen is one of the Church’s earliest martyrs; his martyrdom, in 36 AD, is told in the Acts of the Apostles.
So, three tunes for this day, shall we?
“Good King Wenceslas”
This true Christmas Carol—true as it falls within the twelve day Festival of Christmas—is based on the life of St. Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia, who was martyred in AD 935. He was, we are told, assassinated by his brother Boleslaus the Cruel, which explains the dearth of children I have met named Boleslaus.
As old as the veneration of St. Wenceslas is—well over a thousand years, now—the classic lyric about him only dates to 1853, written by John Mason Neale. The tune is far older; it is apparently a 13th century spring carol called “Tempus adest floridum” first published in a Finnish collection in 1582.
A short film? With Der Bingle?
“Carol of the Bells”
This song is perfect for St. Stephens Day as long as you put on your somewhat blurry glasses and use your Julian Calendar-Gregorian Calendar Converter with a certain sloppiness.
Work with me, people.
The music was composed by Mykola Leontovych, a Ukrainian composer, with a lyric put together some years later by American Peter Wilhousky.
“Joy, Health, Love and Peace”
In Britain, or at least some parts thereof, it was traditional on St. Stephen’s Day to hunt a wren and then parade about with a bit of holly bush and the wren in a box and and go door to door with a knock and a “Please to see the king!” The various strains of tradition, orthodoxy and culture swirl about in beautiful confusion and settle on, “Please to see the king.”
Some guitar:
Somehow this might have been entitled: Boxing and Boleslaus. Betcha that would be a first. Fun historical facts as usual.Report