Earlier this month I mentioned that some consider December 28th the unluckiest day on the Christian calendar. Since today is December 28, I thought it might be good day to talk about that….
It seems that how December 28 got such an ominous reputation has to do with folklore, infant mortality, and a paranoid madman emperor who lived in 73 B.C.
In the Catholic church, three feast days are marked immediately after Christmas. After the feast of St. Stephen on December 26, and the feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist on December 27, comes the feast of the Holy Innocents (alternatively known as Childermass) on December 28. Childermass commemorates the slaughter of all the young male children of Bethlehem at the command of King Herod in an attempt to destroy Jesus.
The paranoid madman I referred to earlier was King Herod — if he wasn’t a madman, he was certainly a “very paranoid man,” who according to first-century historians not only killed one of his wives and several of his children, bur also gave orders when he was dying that people from every town and village in his territory would be held together in one of his prisons and slaughtered upon his death, so there would be tears in every town of Judea.
So as a result of the association with King Herod, December 28 certainly wasn’t a good day for children.
Catholics observe December 28 with prayers and readings referencing King Herod’s slaughter of babies, as recorded in Matthew. Priests normally wear white during the Christmas season, but on December 28, they wear red to commemorate the early child martyrs.
Today most people don’t think much about the day’s evil roots, but in the past, the day was considered incredibly unlucky. The most common superstition was that anything begun on the day would never be finished or would go disastrously wrong — even doing something as innocent as laundry would be certain to result in a death in the family!
This day now serves as a reminder that not a whole lot has changed in our world — it’s not as safe for as many people as we would like to believe. Innocent people are still put to death…. today is a good day to remember that.
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