This is part five of the “Twelve Posts of Christmas,” a series exploring twelve traditions of the Christmas season.
I am here to remind you, yet again, that it’s still Christmas! Happy fifth day of Christmastide!
You might be thinking: “I’m burnt out from holiday celebrations! There are more pine needles on my floor than on my Christmas tree! Half of my body weight is composed of leftover Christmas cookies! I’d rather get run over by a reindeer than listen to another holiday jingle!”
Ah, yes, the burden of living in such abundance that we are constantly drowned by good things. (Read Ross Douthat on decadence.) Do not let sticky fingers and perceptible pudge keep you from encountering the profundity of the time.
This very day offers the perfect antidote to overindulgence and post-party ennui. Today is the Feast Day of Thomas Becket: Martyr and Saint.
The ascetic Archbishop was martyred on this day, December 29, in the year of our Lord 1170, while presiding over daily vespers inside his Canterbury Cathedral. Becket was a particularly intelligent Norman who had served as Lord Chancellor to the King of England, Henry II, and as foster-father to his son, Henry III. A man of the world, Becket had enjoyed a successful political career as an especially close friend of the king. However, upon receiving his mitre and crozier, Becket underwent a change of heart — he abandoned (most of) his past luxurious and selfish habits. Instead, he shod the poor with his own hands and donned a hair-shirt under his clerical robes. When complicated legal questions arose over who had proper jurisdiction over the Church — the Pope or the King — Archbishop Becket defended the claims of religious authority against those of the state.
Becket’s refusal to submit to King Henry’s account of royal authority caused a great upheaval. The king, exhausted from the political strife, in the presence of his noblemen uttered (the apocryphal) plea: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four lords in royal service soon left for Canterbury to eliminate Becket’s challenge to the throne — an act which ended in the saint’s dramatic death by sword on the steps of the Cathedral quire.
Becket became a saint almost immediately after his death, thanks to a petition to the pope by his great frenemy, King Henry II, who had to submit to various penances in order to expiate himself from the sin of episcopicide.
The full tale of St. Thomas’s life and martyrdom is too exciting and important to be detailed justly here, but there are several modern biographies that can provide the intrigued reader with a fuller picture. Many authors of Becket’s own time memorialized his story in the wake of his death — a particularly gruesome eyewitness account of his murder can be read here, and an early hagiography here.
Throughout the High Middle Ages, St. Thomas was the most popularly venerated saint in Europe (apart from Mary and Joseph). While his story has lost some of its original ubiquity, its moral clarity cuts through the fog of modern laxity.
The story of St. Thomas Becket’s life and death have inspired countless biographies, plays, and other works of art. Perhaps most famously, the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1342—1400) follows a group of 30 pilgrims on their way to the site of Becket’s martyrdom in the Canterbury Cathedral. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote the verse drama Murder in the Cathedral, published in 1935, about the sainted Becket. The play follows the tense few weeks of the saint’s life leading up to and culminating in — you guessed it — his murder in the cathedral.
As you seek to find a way to commemorate this day (other than go to mass if you are Catholic, of course), I recommend a formal viewing of the film Becket (1964). I watched the movie just for you, dear reader, so that I might provide a firsthand report. While historians may bicker about ethnic inaccuracies and missing plot points, the film shines in its core purpose: revealing the story of a man who stands fast in the truth in the face of immense political and personal pressures.
The film — which won the Oscar for Best Screenplay — is based on a play titled Becket or the Honour of God by French playwright Jean Anouilh (1910-1987). Becket stars the last titans of Hollywood’s Golden Age: Richard Burton’s masterful portrayal of St. Thomas is matched by Peter O’Toole’s fervently wayward King Henry II. It is no wonder the movie received cinema’s highest award for its writing — the dialogue throughout radiates with the heightened energy of one man’s spiritual awakening, an awakening that rattled a nation and changed the course of history.
While the real-life Becket was undoubtedly more gruff and prone to outbursts than Burton’s saint, the film encapsulates the purpose of hagiography itself — to call the heart and mind to higher things: the narrow way.
As your poinsettias wilt, eggnog stagnates, and fruitcake stales, I commend to you St. Thomas Becket as a testament to the greater meaning of the Christmas season.