8. Prolicide. Americans are right to refer to this time of the year as a “holiday season.” December is packed solid with days that are holidays (or holy days). It starts on December 6th (if you don’t count Thanksgiving) and it continues until the Feast of the Epithany (January 6th). Depending on which traditions you choose to recognise, you can include St Nicholas Day, The Immaculate Conception, Saturnalia, Yuletide, Brumalia, Kwanzaa, Hannukah (a movable feast), Boxing Day (or the Feast of Stephen), all the 12 days of Christmas.
The 12 days of Christmas run from 25th December (Christ’s birth) to the Epiphany (January 6th), with celebration of the visit of the Magi and Christ’s circumcision inclued in the 12 days. The Epithany either celebrates the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles, as represented by the Magi – or it denotes the divine manifestation of Jesus at his baptism, by John The Baptist. The problem with the Magi version of the Epiphany is the placing of the date of the Feast of The Holy Innocents.
The Gospel of Matthew insists ob the following set of events. The three Magi are following a star from the east to locate a newly born king and stock him up with Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. They encounter Herod, ruler of Judea, who asks them to inform him when they find the baby. Having found Jesus, they deliver their gifts and then leave hastily, having been warned by an angel to tell Herod nothing. An angel then tips Joseph off about Herod’s intention to kill the baby Jesus. So he grabs wife and child and heads off to Egypt as an asylum seeker, to wait out Herod’s death. Herod realizes that the Magi have scooted off back to Persia and orders that all children under 2 in Bethlehem be slaughtered.
If the Epiphany celebrates the Magi’s meeting with Jesus, then it should precede the Feast of the Holy Innocents by at least a day or two, allowing the Kings and Jesus’s family to shoot the moon before Herod throws a wobbly and orders infanticide. But actually it’s the other way around. Epiphany is 8 days after the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
Clearly, there’s no organized chronology in these feasts, but it’s really unlikely that any of this happened. Josephus, the historian of the day, makes no mention of any such massacre of children by Herod, but he faithfully records most of the events of Herod’s reign.
Herod was indeed murderous, especially towards his own family. He put his wife Mariamne I on trial for adultery, and had her executed. Next to go was Alexandra, Mariamne’s mother, who was executed without trial. Herod then executed his brother-in-law Kostobar for conspiracy. Towards the end of his reign he eliminated two of his sons, Alexander and Aristobulus. Finally, he killed another son, Antipater, leaving only three others to inherit the kingdom when he was gone.
Most of these executions were prompted by Herod’s suspicion that his family was plotting against him. He thus might possibly have ordered the massacre of some children in Bethlehem on the simple suspicion of a future rival for his surviving sons. However there is no record of such an act – and it would have been headline news.
Prolicide, by the way, means the murder of one’s own offspring. It’s something that Herod was rather good at – and which maybe inspired the myth of the Massacre of the Innocents.
The following are links to all the Xmas words: #1 Hwoelor-tid, #2 Brumalia, #3 Protomartyr, #4 Dulocracy, #5 Pohutukawa, #6 Hagiolatry, #7 Sinterklaas, #8 Prolicide, #9 Apophoret,#10 Kenosis,#11 Psilanthropy,#12 Parepochism
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~ Napoleon Bonaparte
