Stephen’s Day in Ireland
26th December still a major festival for Irish Catholics
The 26th of December is the Feast of Stephen (the first Christian martyr) and is referred to in the carol Good King Wenceslas. In Catholic Ireland it has tradtionally been known as Wrens Day(Lá Fhéile Stiofáin)
In the church calendar, St Stephen’s Day is associated with alms: collecting money for the poor. Alms boxes would be brought into English parish churchs during December. These would then be broken open on Stephen’s Day. Pepys refers to this in his diary entry for 19 December 1663.
Thence by coach to my shoemaker’s and paid all there, and gave something to the boys’ box against Christmas
Workers’ Holiday
The day also became associated with recreational and sporting events in Britain and Ireland. These included chaotic ‘football’ matches between English villages. By the Nineteenth Century this had evolved into a secular festival for workers. The name Boxing Day was made official in the 1830s and became a public holiday in the 1880s.
For Catholics in Ireland, ‘Stephen’s Day’ retained a stronger cultural resonance with it own customs — the Wrens Day mummers for example. The tradition of visiting neighbours with gifts of food and drink also continued for much longer. It is described in the Irish American song Christmas in Killarney, though this misleadingly suggests that these home visits happen on the 25th
Visiting another family on Christmas Day was, in fact, seen as a transgression of social protocol, as indicated in John McGahern’s Amongst Women, set in the 1950s:
