If you listen to the radio at all this month, you will certainly
hear Christmas music, from the Chipmunks to Handel’s
”
Messiah
”
and everything in between.
If you listen to the radio at all this month, you will certainly hear Christmas music, from the Chipmunks to Handel’s “Messiah” and everything in between.
Most of these songs are so familiar that we don’t even hear the words anymore, and if we once knew them, say for the fifth-grade Christmas pageant, we now remember mere fragments.
So when “Good King Wenceslas” came on the other day, I listened to the words as carefully as I could. What a story! There is the good king, cozy in his castle the day after Christmas (the Feast of Stephen is Dec. 26), and as he wipes the fog from the leaded window, he sees, in the icy landscape, a peasant stooping to gather wood.
Since the frost is cruel, he rounds up a page and determines to deliver not only firewood but a feast to the unwitting peasant. When the servant complains that his feet are freezing and he can’t go on, Wenceslas encourages him to step in the footprints he has left in the snow, and in the song “where the snow lay dinted, heat lay in the very sod,” since Wenceslas, although he didn’t know it yet, was a saint.
It’s a stirring example of kingly beneficence and a tidy parable of Christian generosity, except of course it never happened.
Wenceslas was actually a Duke of Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), born in 907, in the castle of Stochov near Prague. The castle is gone now, but there is still an oak tree there that was supposedly watered by his nannies with his bath water, making the tree strong. The church Wenceslas attended also exists today.
After overthrowing his mother’s regency and ascending to the throne at age 18, he worked to spread Christianity, earning the resentment of nobles, including his own brother Boleslav. Boleslav invited Wenceslas to a religious festival and then attacked him on his way to Mass. As the two were struggling, Boleslav’s supporters jumped in and murdered Wenceslas at the age of 21. He is venerated today as the patron saint of the Czech Republic.
Later paintings depict Wenceslas providing shelter for orphans and buying children out of slavery. There is also a legend of Wenceslas disguising himself to gather kindling in the forest for distribution to the poor, but not of the specific incident in the carol.
Another oddity about the carol is that the melody is actually from a Latin dance melody, meant to be performed in a sprightly and joyous manner to celebrate the return of spring.
But you know, the tune may be borrowed, the legend may be iffy and the heated footprints may not have happened, but “Good King Wenceslas” still has everything we want in a Christmas carol: a hummable tune, a story of giving and a little bit of magic.
May your holidays have all these things and more.
