Christmas Day, the feast which celebrates God becoming one of us in order to save the world from sin and death, is followed immediately by the Feast of the first martyr, Saint Stephen. How did this come about?
The celebration of the feast of St. Stephen on Boxing Day has no real connection with Christmas itself. It is probably an example of what is called the Baumstark1 law which says “primitive (i.e. the oldest) conditions are maintained with greater tenacity in the more sacred seasons of the Liturgical Year.” Christmas is an adaptation of the Roman feast of Sol Invictus, the Undefeated Sun, and only came into common use in the sixth century. The Feast of St. Stephen is much older than that. It was already fixed in the calendar by the fourth century and it had been celebrated by common custom long before that. Indeed that tradition is so old that it’s not impossible that December 26th celebrates the actual the day of his martyrdom.
It took quite a while when the Church was new for the first Christians to come to grips with the idea that anyone, Jew or Gentile, could be a faithful follower of Christ. Their uncertainty about what to do was manifested in their treatment of the poor and needy in their new and inexperienced community. Saint Luke records how “the Greek speaking Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” (Acts 6:1) The Church was so small that everyone was able to gather together and seven men were chosen to look after this matter. One of these was Stephen, a Greek speaking Jew.
In common with the rest of the first Christians, Stephen seems to have attended his local synagogue as well as the Eucharistic celebrations. Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia (modern Turkey), all Greek speakers, had their own synagogue, the Synagogue of the Freedmen, and Stephen upset them by speaking about his faith in Jesus, the Messiah. Stephen’s reputation as a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit and his skill as an orator singled him out for special attention. The Freedmen tried to argue with Stephen but his arguments and logic could not be faulted. His ability as a speaker and his obvious faith and intelligence were resented and after a while his enemies decided that violence was their only defence.
Stephen was accused of blasphemy, that is, insulting God and the Law of Moses. He was haled before the Sanhedrin, the same body that had condemned Jesus, and asked whether the charges were true. Stephen answered the charges with a beautifully constructed speech which, even if it was helped by St. Luke’s literary skills, rehearsed the whole of Jewish history up to the point at which the Messiah, Jesus, appeared. He quoted from the Books of Moses and from the prophets. In his summary, itself a quotation from Isaiah, that most highly respected of prophets, Stephen cried out, “You stiff-necked people! You’re just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Acts 7:51) This was a step too far and when Stephen topped it with the words of the Prophet Daniel, “I see heaven opening and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father,” he was taken out and stoned to death. St. Paul, still a Pharisee at that time, witnessed the execution and approved of it and looked after the executioners’ coats while they did the deed.
Stephen was the very first of Jesus’ followers to be killed for his faith. He set an example that so many others have followed since. The Feast of Saint Stephen, like the Feast of Easter, keeps its place in the calendar because of its importance in the life of the Early Church.
Author: C B Whittle