Feast Day: December 28

The Anglican calendar is ordered by a hierarchy of holy days, each carrying a different weight of observance. At the top sit the seven Principal Feasts — the highest days of the liturgical year. Below them are the Red-Letter Holy Days, appointed in the BCP 2019 with their own collects, propers, and lectionary readings, listed on page 688. They are called Red-Letter Days because, in the tradition of printing church calendars, these days appear in red ink, distinguished from the Optional Commemorations which appear in ordinary type. The Feast of the Holy Innocents, observed on December 28, is one of these Red-Letter Holy Days.

December 28 is the fourth day of Christmas. Stephen was honored on the 26th as the willing martyr who chose to die for the faith. John was honored on the 27th as the confessor who suffered and was not killed. The Holy Innocents are honored on the 28th as those who died for Christ without choosing, without understanding, and without any opportunity to confess the faith for which they are counted among the martyrs. They are the third type of witness in the days after Christmas: not the witness of decision or endurance, but the witness of sheer vulnerability before the violence of the powerful.

The feast sits at the most difficult theological intersection of the Christmas season. The birth of the Savior causes the death of children. Herod’s slaughter of the boys of Bethlehem is the direct consequence of the Incarnation entering history. The Christmas season does not soften this or defer it to another time. It places it on December 28 — four days after the angels sang, while the shepherds are still telling everyone what they have seen, while the magi are still on the road home. The joy of Christmas and the grief of the innocents are held together, because that is where they actually belong.

The Biblical Event

The account is in Matthew 2:13–18, the appointed Gospel for this feast. The magi have visited Herod in Jerusalem asking for the king of the Jews, and Herod has learned from the chief priests and scribes that Bethlehem is the prophesied birthplace. When the magi do not return to tell him where the child is, Herod acts: “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.” (Matthew 2:16, ESV) Matthew’s account is brief and does not attempt to explain the mystery of God’s providence in this event. An angel warns Joseph. The family flees to Egypt. Jesus escapes. The other children do not. The asymmetry is stark and Matthew does not resolve it. He simply records it and then, in the next verse, quotes the prophet.

The fulfillment citation Matthew reaches for is Jeremiah 31:15: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18, ESV) Rachel is the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, buried near Bethlehem according to ancient tradition. In Jeremiah’s original context, she weeps for the children of Israel being led into exile past Ramah. Matthew hears in her weeping the voice of every mother in Bethlehem who lost a son to Herod’s soldiers. The grief is real, it is named, and the prophet does not silence it. The word of God does not require the sufferers to stop weeping before it is willing to speak.

But Jeremiah 31:15 is not the end of the passage. Verses 16 and 17 follow: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:16–17, ESV) Matthew quotes only the lamentation. The BCP’s appointed reading extends further: Jeremiah 31:15–17. The hope is present in the text, but it does not come too soon. The prophet allows the weeping its full weight before the promise arrives.

The Theological Significance

The ancient Church called the Holy Innocents martyrs — the first martyrs to die after the birth of Christ, preceding even Stephen. They are martyrs not by confessing Christ with their lips but by dying in his place, in his town, at the same age, under the same king who sought to destroy him. The Church’s theological instinct is sound: martyrdom is defined by the cause for which one dies, not by the consciousness of that cause. These children died because a king feared the child born in Bethlehem. They died for Christ, even though they could not have known it.

Revelation 21:1–7, the appointed Epistle from the propers on page 730 of the BCP 2019, is the eschatological answer to Rachel’s weeping: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, ESV) The promise is total: every tear, not some tears. Death shall be no more — not reduced, not managed, but abolished. The mourning of Bethlehem belongs to the former things that will pass away. The Church appoints this text on the feast of the Holy Innocents not to rush past the grief but to name its destination. The weeping is real. Its end is also real.

Psalm 124, the appointed psalm, is the psalm of those who narrowly escaped destruction: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive.” (Psalm 124:2–3, ESV) The psalm is sung by those who were delivered. On the feast of the Holy Innocents, the Church sings it on behalf of those who were not delivered — trusting that the Lord who is on our side receives those who had no human defender, no warning angel, no flight to Egypt. The psalm’s final verse is the confession that sustains the whole: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 124:8, ESV) Even when the escape does not come.

The feast of the Holy Innocents has always spoken with particular force to the grief of those who have lost children — through death in infancy, through miscarriage, through illness, through violence. It is the Church’s annual acknowledgment that the Christmas story contains this grief, that it is not excluded from the season’s joy but held within it. The one born in Bethlehem knows what Bethlehem lost because of his birth. He is not indifferent to it. The Revelation promise is his promise: he will wipe every tear from every eye.

The BCP 2019 Collect and Preface

The BCP 2019 appoints the following collect for the feast on page 625: “Almighty God, out of the mouths of children you manifest your truth, and by the death of the Holy Innocents at the hands of evil tyrants you show your strength in our weakness: We ask you to mortify all that is evil within us, and so strengthen us by your grace, that we may glorify your holy Name by the innocence of our lives and the constancy of our faith even unto death; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who died for us and now lives with you and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.” The collect does two things simultaneously. It names what God does in this event — shows his strength in our weakness, manifests his truth out of the mouths of children — and it turns the death of the innocents into a petition for the Church. Mortify all that is evil within us. Strengthen us to glorify your name by the innocence of our lives and the constancy of our faith even unto death. The feast of those who died without choosing is the occasion for asking that the Church would be faithful in its choosing — that our lives would have the quality of innocence these children had by nature, and the constancy of faith they could not express. Their involuntary witness becomes the standard for our voluntary one.

The Preface of Christmas, found on page 152 of the BCP 2019, is appointed for this feast: “Because you gave Jesus Christ, your only Son, to be born for us; who, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary his mother, was made truly man, yet without the stain of sin, that we might be cleansed from sin and given the right to become your children.” (BCP 2019, p. 152) The Christmas preface governs the feast of the Holy Innocents because the Incarnation is the reason they died. The child born for us is the child Herod was trying to kill when the innocents were slaughtered. The preface of the cradle is, on this day, also the preface of the grief the cradle caused — and the promise that the one born for us has made all who die in his name his own.

The Holy Innocents in Anglican Worship

The Feast of the Holy Innocents has been observed on December 28 since at least the fifth century and was retained in the Church of England at the Reformation as a Red-Letter Holy Day. Red vestments are worn, honoring the innocents as martyrs, even within the Christmas season.

The feast has historically been a day of particular intercession for children — for those who have died young, for those who suffer violence, and for all whose lives are cut short before they have the capacity to speak for themselves. It is the Church’s annual confession that the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these, not despite their helplessness but in some mysterious way because of it. The collect’s petition for innocence of life and constancy of faith is shaped by the very quality that made these children martyrs: they had no defenses, no pretenses, nothing to offer but their lives.

The feast also stands as a testimony against the powers that destroy the vulnerable in their pursuit of the powerful. Herod’s massacre was a political act: a king eliminating a perceived rival. The Church remembers it annually not as a curiosity of ancient history but as the perennial shape of the world’s hostility to the reign of God. Every generation has its Herods. The Church that observes December 28 names that pattern honestly and refuses to let it pass without lamentation.

Observing This Feast

December 28 falls within the Christmas season. When it falls on a Sunday, the feast may be observed on that Sunday or transferred to the nearest following weekday, per the rubrics on page 689 of the BCP 2019.

To observe the feast: pray the collect from BCP 2019, p. 625. Read Matthew 2:13–18 and sit with the asymmetry — Jesus escapes, the children do not — without rushing to resolve it. Read Jeremiah 31:15–17 in full, allowing the lamentation its proper weight before the promise arrives. Pray Psalm 124 on behalf of those who were not delivered, trusting that the Lord who is on our side receives those who had no escape. Read Revelation 21:1–7 and let the promise of every tear wiped away be the horizon toward which the feast points. And consider the collect’s petition: that our lives would be marked by the innocence and constancy of faith that these children embodied in their death without knowing it.

Conclusion

The Holy Innocents are the Church’s witnesses who could not speak. They died for a king they never knew, in a town that had just welcomed him, killed by a tyrant who feared what he could not control. The ancient Church was right to call them martyrs. They died in the cause of Christ before any of the apostles, before any of the confessors, before anyone had the chance to choose. And the Church honors them on December 28 with a Red-Letter feast, a proper collect, and the full weight of the Christmas preface — because the one born for us is the one in whose name they died, whether they could say so or not.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, ESV)