History Series: St. John the Baptist Day
History of St. John the Baptist Day
It’s Midsummer Day
The Feast of St. John the Baptist, or the Nativity of St John the Forerunner, sometimes called St. John the Baptist Day, is celebrated on June 24 in many places worldwide, though not much in the United States, as we’ll see below.
Celebration of the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist goes back at least a millennium and a half. The Council of Agde mentions the feast in 506 AD in its list of festivals. Most saints’ festivals are tied to their death, but John’s is an exception, connected to his birth.
I saw this famous painting of John the Baptist above by Leonardo da Vinci, believed to be his last painting, in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Who was St John the Baptist?
John the Baptizer (he did not attend a Baptist church) was a contemporary of Jesus and the son of Jesus’ mother’s sister Elizabeth, making him Jesus’ cousin. As John grew up, he became a prophet in the tradition of Old Testament prophets. No prophet had been recorded since the time of Malachi some 400 years earlier, at the end of the Old Testament canon. His ministry attracted large crowds, and his message, in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, was:
