Holy Innocents Day

Innocents Day 

HOLY INNOCENTS DAY -DECEMBER 28

The day commemorates the execution of the innocent, male children in Bethlehem as told in Matthew 2:16. Also known as the Feast of the Holy Innocents (and referred to as Childermas), the day refers to King Herod's order found in Matthew's account of the king's reaction to the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy.

Massacre of the Innocents is the incident in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The Catholic Church regards them as the first Christian martyrs, and their feast – Holy Innocents' Day (or the Feast of the Holy Innocents) – is celebrated on 28 December.

According to the New Testament, Holy Innocents’ Day was the massacre of some 20,000 boys, two years old and below. It was ordered by a furious King Herod more than 2,000 years ago, after he learned that he was tricked by the Three Kings, whom he asked to drop by at his Palace in Bethlehem so he would go with them to visit the newly born child, Jesus Christ. But deep inside Herod was his sinister plot to kill Baby Jesus, whom he considered a rival to his throne. 

In the reading of Matthew 2:16-18, it says: “When Herod realized that the visitors (Three Kings) from the East tricked him, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and neighborhood who were two years old and younger.

Matthew also wrote that the Holy Family fled to Egypt after “an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and said, ‘Herod will be looking for the child in order to kill him. So get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you to leave.”

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the vicinity of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews, whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi.

The slain children were regarded by the early church as the first martyrs, but it is uncertain when the day was first kept as a saint’s day. It may have been celebrated with Epiphany, but by the 5th century it was kept as a separate festival. In Rome it was a day of fasting and mourning.