Today is a feast day that, while not honored throughout the church, is especially reverent in African communities throughout Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay: Saint Balthazar, King of Macedonia and one of the Magi who sought out the infant Christ.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel does not name the Magi, nor does the writer even number them. The names, and their numbering, are all part of lore. So, where did we get the names of the Magi?

I’m glad you asked!

The names of the Magi are derived from a 6th Century Greek manuscript that was translated into Latin and widely distributed. There we read that the Magi who visited the Christ after following astrological signs were named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Of the three, Balthazar developed a particularly powerful following, mostly because it was purported that he was the Magi who carried the myrrh, the most mysterious and tragic of the “gifts” given to the infant Jesus.

The Venerable St. Bede describes him as being a black man with a long beard which, while surely conjecture, struck a tone with many parts of the church that were under represented in depictions of the scriptures, especially as the whitewashing of the Bible had largely been completed by then.

In short: Saint Balthazar provided an opportunity for much of Christendom to see themselves in the story when they had largely been erased and replaced.

Today in many parts of South America, in non-Covid days, you’d find festivals and street parades honoring St. Balthazar and his elegantly morbid gift of myrrh. He is the patron saint of those who work with saws, thunder, those with epilepsy, and those who manufacture playing cards (I have no idea why), and of the three kings of lore, is the most popular.

Tradition has him being entombed at Cologne Cathedral in Germany, having been moved there from the original resting place of Constantinople (or is it Istanbul?). There the legend says his remains are kept with his other two companions at the Shrine of the Three Kings.

Now, all of this is legend and lore, from the top to the bottom. So why bother noting this feast day at all?

We must remember that while religion is Divinely inspired is is held in cracked clay jars of the human imagination. This feast day speaks to a wide swath of humanity and, in the Biblical narrative, plays an important part in Matthew’s Gospel. The gift of myrrh to the infant Jesus is a foreshadowing of his death, a little “flash forward” the Gospel writer provides for the ending of the story.

Indeed: the Jesus story is no story at all without the myrrh-y part.

So Saint Balthazar is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, of at least two things:

First: the whitewashing of the Bible (making all the characters European) is a disgrace and should absolutely be repudiated as a practice.

And secondly: the legends and lore of the faith still speak, and are still worth remembering and honoring as long as that remains true.

Icon written by Hieronymous Bosch

When the Herods of the world compel you to do things for the state that degrade others, and that your conscience won’t allow, you disobey.

For the good of all humanity.

If you need advice, Magi arrive in just a few days who have some experience with this.

-art by Cathy Squire

Today the church remembers a chatty 4th Century saint who, despite his best efforts, was terrible at living alone: St. Basil the Great, Bishop and Patron Saint of Extroverts.

St. Basil was born into a wealthy Greek family around the year 330AD. He was raised by his grandmother and pious parents, was well educated, and was influenced in early adulthood by a charismatic Bishop of the church, Eustathius of Sebaste. This influence compelled him to be baptized and spurred a spiritual awaking.

Feeling a call to the ministry, he left his practice of law and education to go where the monastics roam. Traveling to Palestine, Egypt, and Syria, studying the ascetics and the monastic life, he mindfully distributed his wealth to the poor and tried his hand at living the life of a hermit.

He was terrible at it.

He missed talking to people, and found his brain to be a poor conversationalist.

So, he decided to gather around himself a group of like-minded people, thereby effectively creating the first intentional monastic community of the church. His writings and reflections of this time became formative for Eastern Monasticism, and he’s generally thought of as the founder of the first monastic settlement.

As his stature and practice grew, and as his writings were circulated, St. Basil became a respected theologian and practitioner of the faith. He attended the Council of Nicaea and was a strong voice for Orthodoxy.

In 362AD St. Basil was ordained a Deacon in the church, and then a presbyter as his influence grew. He joined with St. Gregory in full-throated repudiation of Arianism (an ancient heresy), and eventually became the administrator of the Diocese of Caesarea.

In 370AD he succeeded Eusebius as Bishop of Caesarea. Though he had some bad blood with a few neighboring priests and bishops (if you think we have theological squabbles today, read some of the stuff coming out of the 4th Century church!), St. Basil was also known to see the best in people, even his opponents. He was also exceedingly generous with his money (he barely kept any) and his time, known for being on the front lines of the local soup kitchen in times of famine.

St. Basil’s writings, especially those regarding care for the poor and the sick, continue to confront Christians today. He did not mince words.

My favorite Basil line has him writing in a pastoral missal, “The shoes left unworn and rotting in your closet are meant for those without shoes, as is the food in your pantry and the unused coat.” And he was known for living this out, not just preaching about it.

The date of his death is unknown, probably sometime in the late 4th Century of liver disease and poor health probably brought on by leading an extremely ascetic lifestyle, but his memory lives on.

St. Basil the Great (as he is now known) is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that proximity is primary. You must be around the people you serve to know them, and you must engage with others, even if you disagree with them.

-icon written by Kreg Yingst

Today, as most of the world celebrates New Year’s Day, the church officially honors an odd festival (which was created in opposition to the New Year’s Day revelries): The Holy Name of Jesus.

To understand why we have this feast day at all you have to go back, way back, to when there were differing calendars, and therefore differing ideas of when a new year actually begins.

For much of secular recorded history, the new year began on March 1st (or at least in March) with the ushering in of meteorological Spring (note: this is not astronomical Spring, but rather just the date when Spring starts to show off in many places). The names of the later months of our current calendar, September, October, November, and December still harken back to this reality, as September is the seventh month (Sept), and October the eighth (Oct), etc. if you start the year in March.

If you care nothing else about this festival or this day, the above is a feather in your cap for 2025. Bet you learned something new.

There was, at the same time, a persistent thought that January 1st marked the beginning of the year, as it honored the god Janus who looked forward and backward and immediately followed the Winter Solstice.

When Julius Caesar reorganized the calendar for Rome, he made it the beginning of the year, and it made sense because the Roman Senate convened in January. The first day of that month became the official “Saturnalia” celebration day, though the weeks prior and weeks after were included in the festivities.

This date as the start of the new year began to spread throughout the centuries, and eventually landed in England and the American colonies who were late adopters to the idea (it took them until 1752).

But, as the Church was birthed in Rome and the Saturnalia festivities were in full swing with drunken parties and dancing and theater tournaments, influential clergy (like Augustine), though they would have rather have had no part in marking the day at all, decided that worship and fasting would be good practices to keep the Christians from the pagan celebrations.

This practice, btw, is still held in some parishes on New Year’s Eve until the wee hours of New Year’s Day, and is called “Night Watch.”

So the church, feeling it needed to keep Christians from getting too boozy and too happy around the pagan feast, went with a more Biblical understanding of the day. Using Christmas Day as a marker (which, again, was reluctantly placed on the calendar…Christmas wasn’t a thing for Christians in that early church) they saw that eight days later would be the circumcision and name-day of Jesus, and they decided, “Yup! That’s what we’ll call it.”

And so, this feast day was born as a reaction to the outside world and a coopting of other feasts at the time. In this way the church showed great ingenuity, in my opinion. After all, people don’t like it when you take things away from them, for whatever reason, so they’d much rather you add or shift things for them.

The above is interesting, but for those of us who are more interested in seeing these holy/holidays differently rather than understanding them as purely a reaction to the outside world (which makes me not want to honor them at all, to be honest!), I present to you this idea:

The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus presents for the church, and for all of us, an opportunity to honor the importance of names for humans.

I remember one time as a young, smart-mouthed kid, that at a Cuban restaurant in Hialeah, Florida, I forgot to note something that I wanted to order and said, “Get Jose back here! I forgot something.”

My grandfather looked at me with a mixture of anger and disappointment and said, “Tim, that is not his name. He is proud of his name. You cannot change it without his permission, and you need to respect it.”

I was obviously (and rightfully!) put in my place. Indeed it was not his name, and I was making a terrible, racist joke that attempted to take that away from him.

Names are important.

This is why it is, in fact, racist to not learn how to pronounce the names of people of color (this tactic has long been used as a way to degrade people). This was recently seen in a prominent Georgia Senate election rally a few years ago.

It is racist to deny people job interviews because they have names that are not “traditional” or are specifically ethnic.

Names are given in love, usually in honor, and mean something.

This is also why when our trans brothers and sisters offer to the world a name that best fits them, we need to honor it.

This day is a reminder for me, and can be for the church, that names matter, by God.

-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa

-editorials by me