On this day we are reminded, as well, that all lives are precious, and it is our responsibility to protect every life from the moment of conception to natural death.  Pope Francis stated in his 2016 address for the Feast of the Holy Innocents: Christmas is … accompanied, whether we like it or not, by tears. The Evangelists did not disguise reality to make it more credible or attractive. They did not indulge in words that were comforting but unrelated to reality. For them, Christmas was not a flight to fantasy, a way of hiding from the challenges and injustices of their day. On the contrary, they relate the birth of the Son of God as an event fraught with tragedy and grief. Quoting the prophet Jeremiah, Matthew presents it in the bluntest of terms: “A voice is heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children” (2:18). It is the sobbing of mothers bewailing the death of their children in the face of Herod’s tyranny and unbridled thirst for power.Today too, we hear this heart-rending cry of pain, which we neither desire nor are able to ignore or to silence. In our world – I write this with a heavy heart – we continue to hear the lamentation of so many mothers, of so many families, for the death of their children, their innocent children. (Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to Bishops on the Feast of the Holy Innocents) The Feast of the Holy Innocents is celebrated on December 28. The young boys killed by Herod were innocent of any crime, except the imagined crime of being potential usurpers of Herod’s throne.  They are acknowledged as “holy” by the Church because of the holy circumstances of their death. They died in hatred of Christ, as martyrs do, and thus the liturgical color of the day is red.  Like the term Christmas for the celebration of the birth of the Savior, Michaelmas for the feast of the Archangel, Childermas refers to the celebration of the Holy Children of  Bethlehem. In the Church the highest form of celebration is always a Holy Mass, and thus Mas(s) was appended in Old English to the feast’s name.  King Herod the Great was the Roman client king of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth. Although he was raised as a Jew he was an Idumean, of a family whose friendship with Julius Caesar and his successors brought them roles in the Roman governance of the region, Herod in Judea, his brother Philip in Syria. King Herod was titled “the Great” due in part to his many building projects throughout Judea, such as the Great Temple in Jerusalem,  and his establishment of the Herodian dynasty. This doesn’t indicate anything about his personal greatness. In fact, he was a divisive and cruel ruler. No, he was not a member of a pagan religion. In fact, he was raised a Jew from childhood. Despite his patronage of the Jewish religion, he was held in contempt for his service of the Romans. Thus, he sought to punish those who opposed him, using divisive tactics to keep his mostly Jewish subjects in line. Sacred Scripture does not tell us how many children died, nor do we have other historical data to give us an accurate number or even a range.  We do not know exactly when the massacre took place, but based on Herod’s command to kill the boys under 2 years of age it probably occurred within 2 years of Christ’s birth.  Most attempts at reconstructing the actual year of the Lord’s birth place it between 6 and 4 B.C.. Therefore, the massacre presumably took place between 4 and 2 B.C.