Tuesday, December 26, 2006

St. Stephen: My Namesake's Namesake

Merry Day-after-Christmas!
Not only is today
Boxing Day (feel free to speak "Canadian" all day, eh), it is also the Feast of St. Stephen, who is pictured above from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
It is also my late grandfather's (dad's side) birthday - hence he was named after St. Stephen per Catholic tradition.
And I was named after my grandfather. (The "Umlaut" came much much later.)

3 comments:

Synd-e said...

"So, drink a twenty-sixer on the 25th, wait for Boxing Day and return the sh!tty gifts, not only can you find out what the stingy b@stards paid, you can buy another bottle for New Year's Day!" - Carolyn Mark and her Boyfriends, "The Christmas Song"

I never knew it was a Catholic ritual to be named after the saint of the day of your birth. According to catholic.org/saints, there are bunch for my day of birth, but only one female... but thankfully my parents didn't name me "Blandina".

Anonymous said...

a beautiful image; it always amazes me with they use gold within art. It would be interesting to study each of these saint images to really get to know the significance and history of such things as the feather and the book and the style of the pattern shown in each.

Steve B. said...

I don't know about the feather or the book, but if you look on top of his head, you'll see 2 stones, indicating how he was martyred.