Feast of St. Stephen

On the day after Christmas we remember the first deacon and the first martyr of the Church. The stoning, with the approval of Saul (later to be St. Paul) takes the life of this young man. In the one of the earliest documented uses of irony in Western Europe, St. Stephen was designated by the Medieval Church as the patron saint of stonemasons and, for a period of time, also as the patron saint of headaches.