10/14/2011
From: Thomas McCarthy
Re: Peter Brimelow’s blog post Happy Michaelmas! (and Rosh Hashanah, of course!)
As cheered, indeed delighted, as I was by your pointed but polite blog entry, I do wish to take partial and equally polite issue with part of your last paragraph: "This year, Rosh Hashana began at sunset on September 28 (Feast of Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton and Margery Kemp for Anglicans or St. Lorenzo Ruiz for Roman Catholics) and ends on September 30 (St. Jerome for both)."
With no denigration intended to or implied regarding St. Lorenzo, I wish to call to your attention that September 28 has been for a thousand years the feast day of St. Wenceslaus (or Wenceslas) — the very same "good king Wenceslas" in whose honor one of the finest, noblest, most loved of all (dare I say the word?) Christmas carols has been sung by the English-speaking peoples for fully a century and a half. Since your mention of Michaelmas is consequent to your ongoing stalwart resistance to the War on Christmas, it seems a shame to let an opportunity go by the board to get in a body blow or two on our side’s behalf in that continuing struggle, even if, strictly speaking, it’s still a dozen or so weeks early. Don’t you agree?
Permit me to add postscriptively that the saint’s feast is also my birthday and has been commemorated as such for, alas, sixty-six years now. Since all of my maternal grandmother’s forebears were Bohemian Czechs and since, furthermore, Wenceslaus is the patron saint of both historical Bohemia and the modern Czech nation, I admittedly have what one might call a vested interest in seeing this great Christian martyr honored and remembered.
But then, as one of your own missions has been to remind all who will listen (and even those who won’t) of the Christian foundations of this country and indeed of the entire West, it’s an interest that you will readily understand without a lot of supererogatory explanation coming from me.
See previous letters by Thomas McCarthy
James Fulford writes: Thanks for the reminder! In fact, Peter Brimelow did mention Wenceslaus in 2008, at about this time.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.