Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Connecting Christmas and New Year's


Connecting Christmas and New Year’s

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The greeting cards say “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” But how often do these days seem disconnected. We might see Jesus as the reason for the season celebrated on Christmas Day but New Year’s Day seems like a day where we countdown to a New Year and later participate in the Feast of Football and Half-times.

            American Christians have appreciated that we celebrate an understanding of spiritual realities in celebrating Christmas. We have ambivalent feelings regarding how commercialized our way of celebrating Christmas may have become but we rejoice when we see an ornately decorated Christmas tree like the one I photographed in New York City's Metropolitan Art Museum the Tuesday following this year's Thanksgiving Day. We tend to agree as Christians, that Christmas Day whether prepared for in an Advent Season or as a season of frantic joy beginning on Black Friday, is a way to celebrate Christ’s entrance into the world for our redemption. Does New Year’s Day fit in to any of this or is it a separate holiday coincidentally celebrated one week after Christmas?

 



            For me, since following the yearly church calendar, no day's significance has grown more for me than that of New Year’s Day. For New Year’s Day is not just the day when we move from one year to another year in the way we number the years. In the church calendar it is also the eighth day of Christmas. On the eighth day of Christmas, it is remembered how Mary presented her son on his eighth day of life to be joined to God's covenant with Israel through the rite of circumcision.

 


New Year’s Eve in Times Square, New York City

Photo downloaded from Shutterstock.com; photo by A. Katz

 

            If you think about the rite of circumcision as practiced within Judaism, it presents a beautiful picture of God’s promise of redemption, as given in the third chapter of Genesis. That promise spoke of how through the woman a son would be born who would be wounded in battle with the Serpent, but would crush the Serpent’s head. A Jewish boy is received into God’s covenant on the basis of his mother being Jewish. She presents her son as the fruit of her womb and the son is then wounded with the bruising of circumcision. The promised redemption through the birth of a son who would be wounded in battle with the serpent is powerfully illustrated in the act of circumcision. Every Jewish infant being circumcised is an illustration of the seed-bearer presenting her son to be wounded in gaining the redemption over the serpent, sin, and death. But on this day when Mary presented her child on the eighth day of his life, he was given a name revealed for him through the lips of angels. He was to be named Jesus for he would save his people from their sins. (Luke 2:21, Matthew 1:21) On this day, the Jewish child Jesus joined his people in the Old Covenant by being wounded in circumcision so that the day would come that He might bring humanity, Jew and Gentile, into a New Covenant by his wounds suffered as the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world. He entered the Old Covenant by the wounds of circumcision; that we might enter the New Covenant through his wounds suffered as the Lamb of God. This New Covenant would be a covenant which he ratified with his own body and blood and empowered in his resurrection unto everlasting life. On this eighth day of Jesus’ life, on the day of his circumcision; the old began to be fulfilled that the new might come into being. It was the beginning of humanity's being transferred from what had been to what would be forevermore. It was a true changing of years and eras.
            In connection with this day when Simeon and Anna saw the infant in the temple in Jerusalem they gave thanks to God that they had seen the arrival of Israel’s redemption, the beginning of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and the ushering in of eternity, redemption and salvation. (Luke 2:22-38)

            New Year’s Day should be a joyous day for us. It is a good way to remember that Jesus entered the suffering of the Old Covenant that he might bring us through his sufferings into the joy of the New. It is fitting that on this day we make prayerful resolutions for leaving behind the old and moving forward into the new. It is a fitting day to celebrate leaving behind one era to move forward into another era. It is a good day to remember the eighth day of Christmas in the beginning of a New Year. It gives us, once we have thought about it, a much greater reason to say to one another with joy and happiness, “Happy New Year!!!”

 


Downloaded from Shutterstock.com; photo by lazyllama