Little Known Christian Holidays

This past week was a week chock full of awesome Christian holidays.
Because of my love of history and the whole Body of Christ, I enjoy commemorating Catholic, Orthodox and even Jewish holidays. The Catholic calendar is by far the easiest one to keep up with. The Jewish calendar has months based on the moon, and since my culture doesn't pay much attention to the moon I get confused. In addition, the sunset beginnings to the holidays really throw me off. It's difficult to follow Orthodox holidays as well because the majority of Orthodox Christians are still following the Julian Calendar. This calendar was named for Julius Caesar, and was put in place before the birth of Christ. It was the calendar of the early Church. The only problem was that the Julian Calendar got off kilter because they didn't quite understand (but were really close) leap years. Pope Gregory fixed these problems, instituting the Gregorian Calendar which we follow today. So, it's awfully hard for a non-Julian Calendar person to celebrate Orthodox feasts because they just seem out of place. Orthodox Christmas comes around during Gregorian January, for instance.
The Catholic calendar of holidays and feasts also has a lot of people and events even the most Protestant of Protestants will already be familiar with.

Valentine's Day is really a Christian holiday commemorating the death of St. Valentine, a martyr of the early church.

St. Patrick was the missionary who converted Ireland to Christianity.

Hallowe'en is "All Hallows Eve" better known as the night before All Saints' Day, which is just a catch all day to celebrate every person who died and went to heaven. We can't possibly know all of God's saints, so they created this day to celebrate the ones we don't know and the ones we knew personally, but aren't remembered by the whole world.
Well, this past week had some holidays that might not sound familiar at all, but they were great!

February 1- the (optional) feast of St. Brigid of Kildare. St. Brigid is very important to Irish Christianity. St. Brigid's Cross, pictured, is the most famous symbol associated with her. I posted about her life further down in this blog. The stories of her life are, to put it bluntly, a little suspect. We don't have the same kind of historical proof for St. Brigid that we have for St. Patrick, for instance. You also have to be careful also because the "celtic" brand of "paganism" celebrates Feb. 1st as a pagan holiday. It's thought that St. Brigid may have been used as a replacement for Brigantia, a pagan celtic goddess. The long and short of it is, even if her miracles are a bit outlandish, her stories are there to spread the news that Brigid's God, the Christian God, has power over nature and is therefore the highest power.

February 2- The Presentation of the Lord, aka Candlemas, aka The Purification of the Virgin Mary, aka Hypapante "the meeting." This is the celebration of the story from Luke, where Joseph and Mary take the baby Jesus into the Temple to sacrifice to the Lord, according to the Law of Moses. This is an important holiday because in it we remember that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice and fulfilled the Law so that we could be saved. The Greek name for this feast emphasizes the second important part, the meeting between Simeon and Jesus and Anna and Jesus. In these meetings, Jesus is recognized as the Messiah. This day is also known as Candlemas because Simeon said that Jesus would be a light to the gentiles, allowing us to be accepted into the Heavenly Kingdom, which makes me very thankful. It's called the Purification of the Virgin Mary because according to the Law, after your firstborn child you could not enter the Temple for a time, and then after the appointed time you would take your sin offering in the form of a dove and burnt offering in the form of a lamb to the Temple and ceremonially become clean again.
We read in Luke that Mary and Joseph brought two doves to the Temple. This tells us that they were too poor to offer a lamb for a burnt offering. It's hard to escape the symbolism that although they could not bring a lamb, they brought the Lamb of God to the Temple, who would be the perfect sacrifice for all! How poignant. I think this is one of my favorite holidays.

Traditions on this holiday include burning candles, and making crepes. We did both. We had dinner by candlelight only. It was very beautiful. I wanted to cook by candlelight as well, but my husband wanted to read. Oh well.

February 3- optional feast of St. Blaise. St. Blaise is another early Christian martyr whose history is largely unknown. However, he became associated with throats because of a story that he saved a child from choking to death on a fish bone. Even though we don't know much about him, it's a sweet tradition to pray to the Lord today for protection over our throats. Although, medieval tradition usually focuses on diseases of the throat, we can also focus on other throaty aspects. We can pray that God will use our voice to spread the Gospel and to sing His praises.

February 5- feast of St. Agatha. This is another celebration of an early saint who died under the persecutions of Decius. Her story has largely been lost to history, but tradition has it that she died from being rolled on coals, among various other tortures. Because of the association with coals, on this day we can pray specifically to God for victims of fires, protection for our homes against fire, and for firemen. In the picture to the right, Agatha is depicted with a (yellow) palm branch that is a symbol of her martyrdom and a plate with her two breasts, which were supposed to be cut off in the process of torturing her to get her to turn away from God. That part may or may not be true, but there you have it. She is also sometimes associated with bread. I think because to someone who didn't know her story, it kind of looks like she has a plate of buns instead of breasts. There are plenty of other saints to associate with bread, though, like St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who I will write about closer to her feast day.

As Americans, products of the Enlightenment and the Reformation, we tend to pride ourselves on our Reason. However, even though the details of some of the lives of the saints are lost to history, that does not mean we should forget our brothers and sisters who suffered and died for the sake of Christ. They were normal people like us, but they had to prove that dying for Christ was gain. We should live for Christ in our free country and pray that God gives us the faith and courage that He gave his children who had to lose everything for His sake.