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Meet the Big Three Saints of Christmas
Their influence continues today
It goes without saying (or should, at least) that commemorating the birth of Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas. Many of the ways we celebrate that event are secular in nature and come down to us from historical figures like Charles Dickens, whose A Christmas Carol has had an everlasting impact on the way we think Christmas should look. What may surprise some people is that several Saints played a key role in creating our beloved traditions. Today, I want to highlight perhaps the three most important Christmas Saints.
St. Boniface (675 — 754)
Easily the most common Christmas decoration is the Christmas tree, and its connection to a Saint goes back 1400 years. St. Boniface is best-known today as the Apostle of Germany because of his missionary work among the pagan Germanic tribes in the 8th century. But he was actually born in Anglo-Saxon England around the year 675, and his early years in the priesthood were spent there as a Benedictine monk. Then, in 719, he was appointed missionary bishop to Germany by Pope Gregory II and sent on his first missionary journey to the region.
Around the year 723, Boniface and a small group of monks were travelling in the region of Lower Hesse (part of modern-day Germany) when Boniface learned of a winter…
