The Eleventh Day of Christmas, January 4th, is the Feast of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American saint, who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. She established a religious community in Emmitsburg, Maryland, dedicated to the care of the children of the poor. This was the first congregation of sisters founded in the United States. She also began first free Catholic school in America, which marked the start of the Catholic parochial school system in the United States.
Other countries celebrate the feast of Saint Simon Stylites, who lived on a small platform on the top of a pillar for 47 years near Aleppo, Syria. Simeon was seeking to escape a growing number of people who frequently came to him for prayers and advice, so after first living in a hut, then in the mountains, he built a small platform atop a pillar which had survived among ruins and lived the rest of his life on it.
