On the Fifth Day of Christmas, the carol sends to us Five Gold Rings. It is also the day on which the Church remembers St Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his cathedral on 28 December in 1170.
The archbishop’s supporters and friends, seeing the world in their robust medieval way, would have likened the five gold rings of the song to the five sword-blows it took to win Thomas the martyr’s crown. For us today, whose taste is generally for less beefy fare, the five gold rings offer instead a way to tell the story of Becket’s life in five cantos: his career in royal service; as archbishop of Canterbury; his exile; his martyrdom; and his legacy.
