Holy Cross Day Traditions

Holy Cross Day has been celebrated on the 14th September since the seventh century. It is also known as the Feast of the Cross. The day commemorates the cross on which Jesus was crucified and which was an instrument of salvation for those who choose to follow Jesus. The cross is deeply symbolic and has great meaning in Christianity. It serves as a reminder of just how much God loves us, how much we are lost without Him, how Jesus has saved us, and how we are called to follow Him in sacrificially serving and loving our neighbours. Because we owe everything we have and everything we are to God, Christians should not boast about what glory they’ve achieved in the world. Instead, we should only boast about the freedom we’ve been gifted through Christ and the cross – which is a gift free to anyone who decides to believe.

‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’

Galatians 6:14

St Helena & St Constantine

Holy Cross Day also recalls three events. First was the finding of Jesus’ cross by St Helena while she was on pilgrimage in Jerusalem. St Helena lived from approximately AD 246 until AD 330. She was empress of the Roman Empire and the mother of the Roman emperor St Constantine. It was St Helena’s conversion to Christianity that influenced her son to legalise Christianity in AD 313 (ending some persecution) then later declare Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire and convert himself.

The second event recalled on Holy Cross Day is the dedication of churches that St Constantine and St Helena had built on the site where Jesus had been crucified. Then the third event is the restoration of the True Cross (as Jesus’ cross is sometimes called) to Jerusalem in AD 629 after it had been taken as a trophy in the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem a few years prior. There is of course more to the story than I’ve shared here, however that is the basic history. What matters is not any relic of the cross itself, but that it was the means through which God offered us salvation.

Celebrations & Recipes

Holy Cross Day is most commonly commemorated through church services and prayer. However, it was historically also celebrated with a feast – hence why it is called the Feast of the Cross. Recipes for Holy Cross Day could include hot cross buns, chocolate and spice hot cross buns, hot cross cookies, or any bread roll or cake decorated with a cross. Since apples are ripe for harvest around this time of year, you could bake a Dorset apple cake and then decorate the top with extra apple slices in the shape of a cross.

Holy Cross Day and St Helena are also associated with basil. According to story, while St Helena was on pilgrimage in Jerusalem and searching for the holy cross, she noticed an unfamiliar green plant growing in the earth. Because it had a strong, sweet smell she decided to dig it up to take it back to Rome with her. It was while St Helena was digging the herb up that she found fragments of Jesus’ cross, the veracity of which she only became convinced by after she had witnessed it miraculously heal a woman who had been near death. St Helena named the green herb basil, because basileus was Greek for ‘king’ and it had grown from the cross of the king of kings. Recipes including basil could be fun for Holy Cross Day. Basil could be made into pesto, tomato and basil pasta salad, spinach and basil lasagne, garlic and basil butter to go on your cross-decorated bread rolls, tomato and basil soup, or any other creative recipes using basil you can think of.