Page 24 2024 Home For The Holidays Lincoln Daily News We know it (sort of), we hear it every Christmas, we’ve played it on a recorder: “Good King Wenceslas looked out on the something, something…uh, the feast of Stephen…the snow was crisp and even.” What is this song even about? And why do we sing it at Christmas time? First things fi rst, who is Wenceslas? Wenceslas is actually the latinized version of the Czech name Václav. Václav/Wenceslas was a real man who lived from approximately 907 until 935 A.D. in the duchy of Bohemia in what is present-day Czech Republic. He was the grandson of Duke Bořivoj I of Bohemia and Ludmila who were converted to Christianity by famous missionaries to the Slavic peoples, Cyril and Methodius. Cyril might be recognized by anyone familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, an alphabet he developed that is still in use by a number of Slavic languages including Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian. How a Martyred Duke Became a Christmas King Saint Wenceslas Catherdral - Photo by Kevin Andre on Unsplash Continued --
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