As I reminded you in a previous article, on the upcoming 4th of December, it is a Provençal tradition to sow wheat to predict whether the coming year will be prosperous.
However, if you look closely at your calendar, December 4th is also Saint Barbara’s Day. This name has only been in the Roman calendar since 1969. Yes, we have only been celebrating Barbara for 36 years. But which saint were we celebrating before? Saint Barbe, with a very subtle lexical distinction. You also forget that on the fourth day of the last month of the year, the communities of our country hold feasts in honor of firefighters.
Why? Could there be a link between Barbe and the fire soldiers?
To enrich your culture, I will tell you the story of Saint Barbe, which is based on sources that are more or less legendary.
“Saint Barbe was born around 235 in Nicomedia (today Izmit, a city in Turkey). She was the only daughter of Dioscorus, a wealthy and pagan noble. Having reached her teenage years, Barbe was of remarkable beauty. To ensure no man courted her, her father locked her in an inaccessible fortress with only two windows. During Dioscorus’s absence, she drew crosses in her tower and added a third window to symbolize the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Upon his return, her father flew into a great rage upon learning that his daughter had converted to Christianity. Mad with rage, after beating her severely, Dioscorus took her to the Tribunal of Marcian so that she could be punished. At 16 years old and guilty of embracing the ‘fancies’ of the Christians, Barbe suffered horrendous floggings, humiliations, and mutilations. During one of these nights of imprisonment, Christ appeared to her and healed her wounds, promising to assist her in all the battles she would fight for the glory of his name. Invincible amid such torments, Barbe was sentenced to be beheaded. On December 4th, her own father decapitated his daughter atop a mountain. No sooner had he finished than he was struck by lightning!”
Legend or reality?
In any case, today, we pray to Saint Barbe, depicted with her tower with three windows, to protect ourselves from lightning. This illustrious martyr has become the patron saint of artillerymen, miners, and firefighters.
And if “For Saint Barbe, the soul grows its beard” (its winter fur), as a proverb states; in Germany and some parts of Switzerland, people cut small branches from fruit trees so that by Christmas, the boughs are adorned with small green leaves and even flowers. An image for eternal life, it appears!
