It is the fourth day of Christmas, and there are eight days to go until the Christmas season starts to blend into the season of Epiphany. And I will tell you that to the best of my memory, while I grew up knowing the carol, The Twelve Day of Christmas, probably through watching television as a kid, Christmas in my childhood and young adulthood, even well after college and getting married, Christmas was never more than Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In my family it was go to church on Christmas Eve, come home and open presents and have dinner. Then wake up on Christmas Day and drive several hours to see relatives; then open more presents, drive home and that was the end of Christmas.

It was not until we had reached our fourth child, which coincided with joining the Anglican Church in a parish near where we lived in suburban Chicago, that we came to start to see the value of Christmas being 12 days long. Even before kids Christmas was getting exhausting from traveling from one house of relatives to another, but once we had children, well, something had to give. We became tremendous advocates to all our relatives to the incredible virtues of not trying to jam pack everything in that first 36 hours. Let’s get together on December 28 instead. It is still Christmas, it is the 4th day of Christmas, and Christmas is 12 days long.

But it all honesty, it took quite a while longer before the 12 days of Christmas turned from being twelve days of cheese, wine, crackers, salami, and cookies into really paying attention to the liturgical kalendar and what it has to say about the meaning of Christmas. It probably took my ordination to the priesthood, and being the person responsible for the parish liturgy, for reality to take. And when looking at the Twelve Days of Christmas and engaging liturgically and devotionally, especially that of the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 8th days, the reality of these days, as the kids say, hits different.

The 2nd Day of Christmas is given over to S. Stephen’s martyrdom, the stoning which follows the testimony he gave at the mock trial he was forced to be a part of. The 4th Day is given over to the Holy Innocents, the young male children murdered by Herod, along with their weeping mothers. The 5th Day, while less celebrated, remembers the martyrdom of S. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 12th century, and the 8th Day (the Christmas Octave Day) focuses on the Circumcision of Christ, seeing it as a pre-figure of His Crucifixion. So much for a boozy and cheese-filled Christmastide.

Why does the Church celebrate these feasts and their very difficult narratives? Is it to sober us up? In a way, yes, it is. What I mean is that the joy and holy revelry of Christmas and the birth of the Holy Child Jesus, while always central to Christmas and encouraged by the Church, must never reach such heights of sugary emotionalism so as to be ungrounded by reality. And the ground of reality is this: Christ was born into a world of darkness. Christ was born into a world soaked in demonic temptation. Christ was born into a world of evil. Christmas demands that we are honest about this.

Certain Jewish people of what S. Luke in Acts 6 calls the “synagogue of the freedmen” lied about S. Stephen and murdered him by stoning, with the assent of young Paul, in an effort to thwart the Jews converting to Christianity. Herod, after hearing the reason for the Magi’s coming to worship the King, lied to the Magi and in an angry rage put to death male children, in an effort to maintain his kingly power. Jesus was born not into a world not in which the hearts of all human beings are filled with peace and light, but into a world in which the hearts of all human beings are filled with sin and darkness. Christ reveals the Light that enlightens every person, but first His light meets the darkness and evil of people living in an environment of fallen, evil angels. This is the world that Christians are called to convert, by being in the world but not of the world; being in the world and being of Christ, the Saviour of all people.

Without question Stephen and the Holy Innocents are in heaven. They are Saints of Holy Church and live in the fullness of the heavenly peace of the Holy Trinity. And yes, Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and all the Saints are singing and singing joyously, as we sang on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They join the angelic choir singing “Holy, holy, holy,” with the sound of the voices like many waters, like thunder, like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. They have been redeemed and are praying for us, that, like them, we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Worthy of the promises of He Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

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