Happy (Anti-Iconoclast) St. Stephen the Younger Day! Oh...And Also Hanukkah
11/28/2021
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November 28th is also the feast day of Saint Stephen the Younger, died 764, first "cancelled" and then martyred over the destruction of icons.

Monk at the monastery of Saint Auxentius at age fifteen. Abbot of Saint Auxentius in 744. Retired in 756 to live as a hermit. Soon after, the iconoclast movement became very active in the area, led by Emperor Constantine Copronynus [sic] V. The emperor tried to enlist Stephen in the movement, but the holy hermit refused, and was exiled. Years later he returned, and to prove how important it was to respect icons and other religious art, Stephen went to the emperor, pulled out a coin that bore the emperor's likeness, threw it onto the floor, and stomped on it; as the emperor understood the importance of his own image, he imprisoned Stephen for 11 months. On his release, Stephen returned to the court and resumed the argument as though nothing has happened. He was ordered executed with more than 300 others who opposed iconoclasm.

The U.S. is also seeing an unprecedented outbreak of iconoclastic vandalism.

The difference, however, is that, unlike the Byzantines, or the Protestants of the Reformation, who genuinely preferred simpler art, these iconoclasts clearly intend to replace the images with new, Politically Correct icons. Steve Sailer is not wrong to say, after the Falls Church, VA School Board voted unanimously to rename Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and George Mason High School,

What names will replace them? I’m leaning toward Mohammed Atta Elementary School and Tokyo Rose High School, but I could see Kim Il-sung and Sirhan Sirhan.

It's the Great Replacement In action.

Oh, Hanukkah begins too, tonight. But it's now a multicultural must that no religious festival can be mentioned without also mentioning the nearest festival of some other religion, just as Christmas can no longer be mentioned without a reference to, well, Hanukkah

Somehow, however, the MSM neglects to provide the nearest saint's day in the Christian calendar to each year's Rosh HashanahYom Kippur and Passover—and there are a lot of saints! So it has become a VDARE.com service (as so often) to fill the gap.

This year, Hannukah doesn't overlap with Christmas at all (it ends on the evening of December 6) so there's even less excuse than usual for insisting on equal time with Christmas. For the record, here's more confirmation that it's actually a minor Jewish festival, inflated only because of its proximity to Christmas: Hanukkah 2020: When it is and what to know (no, it's not the 'Jewish Christmas'), by David Oliver, USA Today, December 10, 2020.

VDARE.com has many Jewish writers and donors (God bless them every one). And, unlike the unpleasant War On Christmas perpetrators, we wish all our readers, writers and donors a Happy. We mean it.

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