How many days and weeks until December 29th?

On December 29th 1170 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was killed in his own cathedral by four knights of Henry II’s household. The king’s outburst against him, remembered as a demand to be rid of a turbulent priest, appears in no contemporary account in those words, but it was taken by the four as an instruction. Becket was canonised within three years. Henry did public penance at the tomb in 1174, and Canterbury became the greatest place of pilgrimage in England, which is where Chaucer’s travellers are going.

On the night of December 29th 1940 the Luftwaffe dropped incendiaries on the City of London and started what became known as the Second Great Fire. Nineteen churches and a great deal of the medieval City burned. St Paul’s survived because a watch of volunteers stayed on the roof through the raid. Herbert Mason’s photograph of the dome standing above the smoke was printed two days later and became the defining image of the Blitz.

The Irish constitution took effect on December 29th 1937, replacing the settlement agreed under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and renaming the state Eire.

A British intelligence officer and an Austrian baroness are an unusual pair of parents. Their daughter, born in Hampstead on December 29th 1946, was the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, who became a fixture of the 1960s pop scene. Jude Law, the actor, was born in Lewisham in 1972, and Mary Tyler Moore, the American actress remembered for her long career in television, was born in Brooklyn in 1936.

Born on December 29th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Marianne Faithfull and Jude Law — both named above — share this star sign with everyone else born in the same window.

None of this is settled fact in the way the history above is — zodiac dates, birthstones and birth flowers are conventions rather than laws, and different sources hedge them slightly differently. The birthstone is the most standardised of the three (set by the trade in 1912 and revised since); the birth flower is the least, resting on Victorian tradition rather than any governing body.

Gift ideas for a December 29th birthday

A small, themed starting point rather than a shopping list — turquoise or lapis lazuli for the stone, Capricorn for the sign, and the sky itself on the day.

December birthstone necklace

A simple pendant in the actual December birthstone colour, from a long-running UK jewellery brand.

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Capricorn constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Capricorn for a December 29th birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the December birthstone and the narcissus or holly — both in one pendant, in a gift box.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on December 29th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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