14th of September - Holy Rood Day
14th of September is the 257th day of the year
Holy Rood Day:
The word rood comes down to us from an Old English word that is also happily the root of the word root and of rod. The Holy Rood is then the cross on which Christ was crucified. This feast day commemorates either the day in 326 when ‘the true cross’ (the churches of Europe and the Middle East had at one time enough crosses and pieces of cross to make a fair-sized boat so it is said) was put on display in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople. That church was built specially to house and exalt it by the Emperor Constantine at the behest of his mother Helena. She had discovered the cross and proved it to be the original by way of a miracle. Alternatively the feast day commemorates the recovery of the cross from the Persians (who had looted it in 614), and its return to Constantinople by the Emperor Heraclius in 629. Many British churches are dedicated to the Holy Rood, the site of the Scottish Parliament with one such link.
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