St. Stephen the Deacon

…the Deacon-like Good King Wenceslaus, and a Prime Minister required by an 8 yr. old girl to sing the Good King Wenceslaus carol

AM: Psalm 28, 30 • 2 Chronicles 24:17-22 • Acts 6:1-7
PM: Psalm 118 • Wisdom 4:7-15 • Acts 7:59-8:8

St. Stephen, the first deacon, was stoned by the Jews for distributing food to widows and orphans on behalf of the breakaway sect of Christians. What makes the feast of St. Stephen vaguely familiar to Americans is ironically an English Christmas carol: “Good King Wenceslaus.”

Good King Wenceslaus ruled what is now the Czech Republic in the late 900s. He was assassinated by his brother, Boleslaus the Cruel. For the next 900 years, legends of Wenceslaus for bravery and deacon-like works of charity grew.

In 1849, an Anglican priest, John Mason Neal, sought to revive the commemoration of saint’s feast days in the Church of England, and did so initially via his popular book Deeds of Faith: Stories for Children from Church History.

In one of its chapters, on a bitterly cold night with deep snow thickly crusted with ice—entirely consonant with the post-Christmas 26th feast of the charitable Deacon Stephen—Wenceslaus sees a poor man trying to gather firewood, before disappearing into the gloom. The king asks his page boy quickly to gather up meat, wine, and firewood, and join him on a rescue mission. The young man complains he will not be able to keep up owing to the treacherous footing. The Good King Wenceslaus wisely advises him simply to follow in the same steps as the King himself had made in the packed snow.

In 1853, Fr. Neal followed up with Carols for Christmas-tide, which included: “Good King Wenceslaus.” The book of songs sold very well in the UK. By 1910 it was included in many US anthologies, and in Christmas carol booklets distributed freely to the schools by the John Hancock Life Insurance Company. In 1944, Bing Crosby sang “Good King Wenceslaus” to a national audience on the NBC Radio Music Hall Live Broadcast, and its recording was included in his successive multimillion selling annual Christmas albums.

Fast forward to 2003 and the Christmas movie, “Love Actually.” Hugh Grant plays the role of the newly elected and very young British Prime Minister on Christmas Eve. Accompanied by a towering old Welsh bodyguard he goes door to door trying to find the home of his love interest, a very kind secretary with whom he has had an unfortunate misunderstanding, and whose address in a dodgy part of London, no government employee reachable on Christmas Eve seems to know. Several people are surprised to find the Prime Minister show up unexpectedly before their front doors. When the two men finally find the right house, the eight year old sister of his secretary opens the door but then demands the two men sing a carol before she will let them in—and somewhat reminiscent of the original rescue mission more than 1,000 years earlier—the older bodyguard leads the uncertain young PM in singing “Good King Wenceslaus.”

Good King Wenceslaus is also commemorated via a monumental statue in Prague of him in armor on a charger. He will come to life whenever Czechia is invaded. Wenceslaus will use a magic sword that reanimates 15,000 knights long buried in the same forest where firewood was harvested in the time of Wenceslaus, and will lead them to triumph.

While I liked toy soldiers from Santa Claus as much as any other boy on Christmas morning, as a kid growing up in very bleak foster homes, on the feast of deacon Stephen, I would have been even more thrilled to have a warm room visited by Good King Wenceslaus....and would have sung any carol in my John Hancock booklet to make it happen.

Written by Tony Stankus

Tony Stankus reminds everyone that there are still 10 days of Christmas this year in which you can, deacon-like, be someone’s Good King Wenceslaus, and serve as an example to a kid to pass on the tradition in the generations to come.