LOOKING OUT, ON THIS FEAST OF STEPHEN
Carol about generosity of King Wenceslas reminds us all of the importance of sharing
Good King Wenceslas looked out On the Feast of Stephen, When the snow lay round about, Deep and crisp and even. Brightly shone the moon that night, Though the frost was cruel, When a poor man came in sight, Gathering winter fuel.
When I was a kid, Good King Wenceslas was always one of my favourite carols. The deep crisp snow. The bright moon. The cruel frost. It sounded like the winters I knew in Alberta.
But I also liked the song because it didn’t have an overt reference to the nativity story. I loved belting out Christmas carols. But I always sang with a slight feeling of guilty ambivalence, knowing my paternal Jewish grandparents wouldn’t approve of my warbling on about the birth of Jesus. Good King Wenceslas, despite all its references to saints, was a story of a good king doing good deeds, a song I could sing with fewer inhibitions.
“Hither, page, and stand by me. If thou know it telling: yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?” “Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain, right against the forest fence by Saint Agnes fountain.”
I had a lot of questions. How big was Wenceslas’s kingdom? Did he really expect his page boy to recognize every peasant, and to know every peasant’s address and backstory? (I mean, who would need facial recognition software or Google Streetview, if you had a wonder-page?)
Why was the king suddenly so keen to bring this particular peasant flesh and wine and firewood? Instead of helping this one peasant, why didn’t he set up a soup kitchen, or lower the royal taxes? And what was a Feast of Stephen, and why would you look out on it?
Bring me flesh, and bring me wine. Bring me pine logs hither. Thou and I will see him dine when we bear the thither. Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together through the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather.
Dec. 26, in fact, is the Feast of Stephen, according to the Catholic liturgical calendar. Stephen was an early Jewish follower of Jesus who enraged leaders in Jerusalem, not just with his preaching against temple corruption, but with his campaign to redistribute alms to widows more fairly. The Book of Acts says he was stoned to death for his defiance. So it’s fitting that Good King Wenceslas would be giving alms on the Feast of Stephen, a saint who advocated for the poor.
As for the King? He was a real person — Wenceslaus or Vaclav I, the Duke of Bohemia. He’s usually depicted on Christmas cards as an old man with a beard. But he was 18 when he came to power in 924 AD and only 32 when he was assassinated by his brother, Boleslauas the Bad. (Theirs was a complicated family. Their mother Dragomir had earlier put out a hit on their paternal grandmother, Ludmila, who was strangled with her own veil. Very Game of Thrones.)
Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart, I know not how. I can go no longer. Mark my footsteps my good page, tread thou in them boldly: Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.
Though he only reigned 11 years, Wenceslaus earned a reputation for Christian virtue and generosity to the poor. He remains the patron saint of the Czech Republic and a potent symbol of Czech nationalism.
So what is he doing in a beloved English carol?
The lyrics were written and published by British cleric John Mason Neale. Neale belonged to the Church of England, but he was fascinated by the idea of reconciling Anglican, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox beliefs and practices, an ecumenism that scandalized his bishop. At one point, Neale, who was working to establish an order of high church Anglican nuns, was attacked and stoned by an angry anti-Catholic mob, who almost killed him. (The experience may have given him a certain sense of fellow feeling with St. Stephen.)
A contemporary of Charles Dickens, Neale was also outraged by the divide between rich and poor in Victorian England and spent most of his career as the warden of a church almshouse for the poor. A keen Latin scholar, Neale borrowed the tune for his carol from an early Medieval Latin hymn to spring, Tempus Adest Floridum, and added the legend of a generous Slavic saint. The result? A carol designed to remind his Victorian audience of the duty and the joy of giving.
In his master’s steps he trod Where the snow lay dinted Heat was in the very sod Which the Saint had printed Therefore, Christian men, be sure Wealth or rank possessing Ye who now will bless the poor Shall yourselves find blessing.
On this Dec. 26, this Feast of Stephen, it’s worth remembering that Boxing Day got its start not as a festival of bargain-hunting and consumption, but as a day when masters gave gifts to servants, when churches opened their alms boxes for the poor.
But we needn’t be kings nor saints, nor Christians, nor believers of any sort, to honour that legacy, and the legend of Good King Wenceslas. We only need to be ready to share.