February 20
Holidays
9 holidays recorded on February 20 throughout history
Quote of the Day
“You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you.”
Browse by category
February 20 is celebrated in Eastern Orthodox liturgics, commemorating various saints and events, reflecting the rich…
February 20 is celebrated in Eastern Orthodox liturgics, commemorating various saints and events, reflecting the rich traditions of the Orthodox Christian faith.
The UN created World Day of Social Justice in 2007, but 71 countries still don't recognize it.
The UN created World Day of Social Justice in 2007, but 71 countries still don't recognize it. The day pushes for fair wages, gender equality, and workers' rights — basic stuff that's still contested. Qatar didn't allow minimum wage laws until 2020. In the US, women still earn 84 cents per dollar men make for the same work. The holiday exists because what counts as "fair" remains an argument, not a settled fact.
Eleutherius of Tournai's feast day honors a 6th-century bishop who supposedly cured people by touching them with his …
Eleutherius of Tournai's feast day honors a 6th-century bishop who supposedly cured people by touching them with his staff. The staff became more famous than the man. After his death, pilgrims traveled hundreds of miles to Tournai just to touch it. They believed it could cure fever, possession, and madness. The church charged admission. By the Middle Ages, the staff generated more revenue than the cathedral's tithes. Nobody knows what happened to it after the French Revolution. The bishop is now the patron saint of horses, which he never mentioned in any surviving text.
The Eastern Orthodox Church follows a different calendar than most of the Western world.
The Eastern Orthodox Church follows a different calendar than most of the Western world. They still use the Julian calendar for religious dates, which now runs 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used everywhere else. Christmas lands on January 7. Easter moves each year but almost never matches Western Easter. The gap widens by three days every four centuries. By 2100, Orthodox Christmas will be 14 days after everyone else's. They're not being stubborn — they're following the calendar that existed when their liturgical cycle was established in the 4th century. Time split in two, and they stayed with the older branch.
The Episcopal Church honors Frederick Douglass today.
The Episcopal Church honors Frederick Douglass today. Not his birth. Not his death. The day he escaped slavery—September 3, 1838. He was 20. He borrowed a free Black sailor's papers and rode a train north, terrified someone would recognize the documents weren't his. Years later, as the most famous abolitionist in America, he kept buying his freedom over and over—raising money to purchase his legal emancipation, then using his voice to demand it for everyone else. He taught himself to read by trading bread with white children for lessons. The church chose to remember the escape, not the speeches. The moment he decided his life was his own.
The feast day of Francisco and Jacinta Marto — the two youngest children ever beatified by the Catholic Church.
The feast day of Francisco and Jacinta Marto — the two youngest children ever beatified by the Catholic Church. They were 11 and 9 when they died, three years after seeing what they said was the Virgin Mary at Fátima. Francisco died in the 1918 flu pandemic. Jacinta followed a year later from complications of the same illness. Before she died, Jacinta told the nuns she'd seen a vision of the Pope praying in a room alone, weeping. She said she knew what war was coming. She was talking about World War II. She died in 1920.
Wulfric of Haselbury died on February 20, 1154.
Wulfric of Haselbury died on February 20, 1154. He was a hermit who lived in a stone cell attached to a church in Somerset for twenty years. He never left. People came to him — peasants, nobles, King Stephen twice. He told Stephen he'd lose his throne. Stephen ignored him. Stephen lost his throne. Wulfric was known for prophecy and for wearing a chain-mail shirt under his habit year-round, even in summer. After he died, monks tried to remove it. They couldn't. His body had swollen around the metal. He's venerated on February 20th, mostly in England. The cell where he lived still exists.
Eucherius of Orléans gets his feast day on February 20th.
Eucherius of Orléans gets his feast day on February 20th. He was a bishop in 8th-century France who opposed Charles Martel's seizure of church lands to fund his army. Charles didn't imprison him. He exiled him to Cologne, then to Liège, where Eucherius died around 743. The church he fought to protect would later canonize him for resisting state power. Charles Martel's grandson became Charlemagne, who built an empire partly by doing exactly what Eucherius said bishops shouldn't do: trading land for loyalty. The church made peace with that arrangement too.
Ukraine honors the Heavenly Hundred — protesters killed by government snipers during three days in February 2014.
Ukraine honors the Heavenly Hundred — protesters killed by government snipers during three days in February 2014. Most died on the 20th. They'd been camping in Kyiv's Maidan Square for months, demanding closer ties to Europe after the president backed out of a trade deal. The youngest victim was 16. The oldest was 82. Within days, the president fled to Russia. The square is now a memorial. Ukrainians call it the Revolution of Dignity.