Mark His Footsteps

Dr. Amy Hall

December 27, 2009

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, Lord God, Light of all our Days, Gift beyond measure.

Good King Wenceslas Looked Out, on the Feast of Stephen.

We hear the drumbeat tune as we prowl around Macy’s for a party dress or wind through the organic labyrinth of Central Market. 

Mark my footsteps my good page, tread thou in them boldly!  

This is one of the songs greeting the season, along with Deck the Halls and Jingle Bells Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey, or the new Bob Dylan version of Santa Clause is coming to town.

Therefore Christians all be sure, wealth or rank possessing, ye who now would bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing. 

Each year, the liturgical calendar rolls back around to Advent, and we find ourselves again in glittery green and bright red shopping malls, walking underneath sparkling snowflakes hanging over Target, listening to carols, and, eventually, once again, here, at the manger, receiving Jesus, Lord of all the world, coming as a child among us.

And then, there are the days after Christmas.  And you, the hearty few, have come back here, to pews and carols, and neighbors.  How do we Mark the Days after Christmas? 

Believe it or not, this somewhat corny, Victorian Christmas Carol about a Good King from 10th century Bohemia isn’t too bad a place to start.

Christians in both the Eastern and the Western Church mark the first days after the birth of Jesus with the Feast of Stephen.  This is the Feast Day marked by Good King Wenceslas in the carol.  The Feast Day of Stephen is, for most Christians around the world, an occasion for Marking the Lord’s Footseps.  It is a day when Christians mark the Gift of Jesus, the Christ child, by celebrating Saint Stephen. 

Protestants aren’t as accustomed to marking our time by way of Feast Days, but, as we worship two days after Christmas, it may make sense to do so.

St. Stephen was the first century Apostle assigned to collect alms from those who had more worldly good for the aid and care of those who had little.  He was the first Stewardship Chairman, so to speak.  On the Feast of Stephen, Christians celebrate the First Christian appointed to call his brothers and sisters to Give.  (We will try not to make too much of the fact that he also ended up as the first martyr.)

The first few days after Christmas are, for Christians in the traditional, Eastern and Western Church, about Giving.  In England, the Feast of Stephen is always January 26, the day after Christmas, and the Feast Day is celebrated as Boxing Day.   Boxing Day is the day established during the reign of Queen Victoria for giving alms to the poor.  Boxing does not refer to prize fighting but to the boxes themselves.  A centuries old tradition was to give boxes of gifts to servants and others in need of charity.

John Mason Neale, the Victorian hymnist and clergyman, wrote this thumpy, bouncy Christmas Carole about Good King Wenceslas to mark the Feast of Stephen, the Feast of Giving, or Boxing Day. 

Good King Wenceslas looks out on the Feast of Stephen.  The frost is cruel, but the moon shines brightly, and there is just enough light for him to make out, down below him, a man gathering the sparse fuel sticking up out of the snow.  King Wenceslas calls his page to ask him where the man lives. 

This being the Feast of Stephen, how can the good King give if he doesn’t even know where the poor man lives?  Blessedly, his servant does know where the poor live, right there on Good King Wenceslas’s land, by Saint Agnes Fountain.  Servant and Lord then go through the snow to bring the poor man a feast. 

In fine Victorian form, the carol ends tidily with what appears to be a summary of the Carol’s lesson. 

Therefore Christian Men be sure, Wealth or Rank Possessing.  You who now would bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing. 

But this lesson is not so tidy, not so easily marked.  This task of tracing the Lord’s footsteps, of walking differently requires still another, more difficult lesson.   We who possess wealth and rank must discover ourselves to be page and poor man servant and recipient – debtors who are given a Feast from the Holy Child.

[John Mason Neale was a Victorian clergyman keen to bring holiness and beauty to the Church of England.  He translated Medieval Latin hymns and, along with this translation work, he helped change the architecture of Victorian churches.  Perhaps most to the point, he helped to eliminate the upper pews for the aristocracy.  He felt it wasn’t quite right for the upper crust to worship apart and removed from the hoi polloi. ]

After the Carol was published, Good King Wenceslas, was quickly beloved precisely by the hoi polloi, by the more common people of England.  It has been variously dismissed or worse by music critics.  The tune is “typically hurdy gurdy,” the lyrics are “ponderous moral doggerel.”  Critics suggest it is “poor and commonplace to the last degree” and attribute its success to “the perverse appeal of feasting and suffering.”   

But, John Mason Neal’s carol continues to appeal.  Each liturgical year, as Advent rolls back around, it has been beloved from Victorian hearth to Edwardian pub to Harod’s of London to Hobby Lobby.

This Feast of Stephen Carol of a Good King who follows his page toward the poor is fitting for marking Christmas.  The simple story appeals to many children and to common people like us, as we follow the footsteps of the One who is Love, coming Down to us at Christmas.

To learn the more difficult task of the Carol, hear how it shifts from telling in third person to speaking in first person. 

The Good King looks out.  Then the Good King Speaks:  Hither Page.  As the caroler sings the song, the Caroler tells about the king, and then becomes the King, calling on the Page.  Then the Page speaks, and the Caroler becomes the page, wishing for some help as he goes forth to help his Master to bless the poor. 

Without the servant, the king wouldn’t know where to go.  What if servant and employer didn’t know one another?  What if the servant didn’t trust his master?  What if the page didn’t trust the king’s intentions toward the poor man gleaning on his land? 

The Feast of Stephen is predicated on knowing one another, master and servant, well enough to be able to ask for directions toward Saint Agnes Fountain, toward the places where the poor live. 

And, as carolers sing the song, we become the Page.  Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind grows stronger, fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer.  That is us. 

In the middle of this Christmas Carol, the King becomes Jesus Christ, and we become the Page, walking along in the Master’s Footsteps, Braving the Fearful Cold of Letting Go of our Economic Safety by Walking in Jesus’ Steps.

How are we to Mark the Days after Christmas?  How are we to begin to give from the Gift that calls so much of us, that Marks Us as Servants as much as it marks us as Stewards? 

The days after Christmas are about a different economy gifting as we mark time and Neighbors differently. 

There are other English carols and stories related to this different way of Marking our days.  The 1962 Carol, Do you Hear what I hear?  Has the very relevant line: Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king, do you know what I know?  In your palace warm, mighty king, do you know what I know?  A child, a child, shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold.

Maybe you have heard the Rowdy old carol: Here We come A’Wasaailing, which also marks a tradition associated with Boxing Day, as servants would go from door to door to share a common cup with the wealthy, and receive gifts of hospitality:

We are not daily beggars

That  beg from door to door;

But we are neighbors’' children,

Whom you have seen before.

. . .

God bless the master of this house

Likewise the mistress too,

And all the little children

That round the table go

. . .

Good master and good mistress,

While you're sitting by the fire,

Pray think of us poor children

Who are wandering in the mire.

The days after Christmas are here marked as walking in the footsteps of one who came down in extravagant love during Christmas. 

If you will allow me to layer hymn onto hymn, think of it this way:  Oh to Grace, how Great a Debter, Daily We’re Constrained to Be.  Therefore Christian Men Be Sure, Wealth or Rank Possessing,

we are also the Poor who are Blessed, by one who Loved us Beyond our Sins. 

Jesus Sought us While we were Sinning Strangers, Wandering from the Fold of God.  The days after Christmas are Marked by these Footsteps, by this different economy.

One of my friends, Peter Storey, put it this way. The most important word Jesus gives Christians on Christmas is Location, Location, Location.  Jesus Came down to us, seeking us while we are yet strangers, risking extravagant love.  He came down to us poor beggars.  He did not come to us as if we are lofty Stewards.  He came down to us as we are Beggars.  And he made us all Holy Debtors. 

In closing, consider Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol.

Dickens transforms the usual, worldly language of profit and debt, of Master and Servant, into a Carol where the Employer becomes the Debtor. 

Cross old Scrooge, the Employer, is the epitome of one who is walking in the wrong footsteps.  Cross!

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this?  Merry Christmas!  Out upon merry Christmas!  What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?  If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.  He should!"

Scrooge’s nephew exclaims:

'There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!'

The only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women open our shut up hearts, and think of people below us as actually in the same boat.  To think of us all as on the same journey, as walking in the same footsteps.  Debters to the one who Comes Down at Christmas. 

Finding ourselves to be Servants, and Givers, is not easy, particularly when we are much more comfortable finding ourselves safely as Men with Wealth and Rank, but . . .

Mark His Footsteps, Fellow Page.  Tread Thou in them Boldly.  We shall Find the Winter’s Rage, Freeze our Blood Less Coldly.