New Year’s Day - a Holy Day
Written by the Panhandling Philosopher
Like many Americans I spent most of
my life thinking of Christmas Day as a day connected to the Christian faith and
of New Year’s Day as a secular holiday. A Christian might make some spiritual
resolutions in keeping to the tradition of making resolutions, and we could
have watch parties to do the countdown to a New Year, and then watch some
parades and football. But Christmas was a day for the Christian faith and New
Year’s Day, well it wasn’t a holy day. But that kind of thinking got changed when
I became a member of a liturgical church with a church calendar that celebrated
a twelve day Christmas season. New Year’s Day began to have a special
significance within the twelve days of Christmas. December 25 was the first day
of Christmas and as you counted off the days, New Year’s Day became the eighth
day of Christmas. On the eighth day of the infant Jesus’ life something special
happened. In a sense the beginning of a new era began to unfold as an old era
began to be left behind. On the eighth day of Jesus life, his mother took him
in her arms to have him blessed, circumcised and given his covenant name. He
was enrolled into the eternal covenant God cut with Abraham by being
circumcised. It was on this day that Mary told the priest the infant’s name
would be Jesus. This was in obedience to the angel. If we celebrate Christ’s
birth on December 25, his circumcision or name day would be celebrated on
January the first. Perhaps Pope Gregory, when he reformed the calendar believed
that a change of the year was appropriate to be recognized along with the
circumcision of Jesus which formally brought him into the Abrahamic covenant of
promise.
To me, remembering that Christ was
named Jesus on the eighth day because he would save his people from their sins,
and to realize that he entered the Old Covenant by having his foreskin cut off,
so that we could enter the New Covenant by his being cut off in the death of a
cross so as to overcome on our behalf both sin and death in the resurrection –
all of this places for me a spiritual foundation for our practices of looking
back and making resolutions with a New Year, or celebrating the coming of the
new with gusto. Having parties, celebrating with gusto all makes sense if on
the eighth day of his life Jesus was taken by his mother to be circumcised into
an Old Covenant so that he could lay his life down and through his death,
burial, and resurrection bring us into a new covenant where the former things
would pass away.
New Year’s Day –for most it seems the ideal time for
parties and football
A Jewish circumcision is full of
imagery. The mother brings her infant son, eight days old, in her arms and
hands him to a couple entrusted to bring him to the priest or rabbi officiating
at his circumcision. For the Christian, there is a beautiful illustration of
the hope expressed in Genesis chapter three for a deliverer who would overcome
the Serpent of old. The woman would bear a son and his heel would be bruised in
battle with the serpent, but he would crush the head of the serpent. So in the
tradition of the brisk, in the Jewish circumcision of an eight day old infant,
the child’s mother brings her son and hands him to those who will oversee his
circumcision, his being given a covenant name, his being enrolled among the
names of those within Abraham’s covenant.
For the Christian the image takes on
special significance with Mary’s bringing her son Jesus to have him
circumcised. The early church described Mary as the Theotokos, a Greek name
meaning the bearer of God. Sometimes we Protestants think it was improper for
the Church to describe Mary as the “mother of God” and opt like some of the
heretics of old for the safety of “mother of our Lord.” Yet in other battles
for the faith we Protestants would insist that when Jesus was being described
as the Lord he is being described as God. Can we have it both ways? Did Mary
somehow bear our Lord who was something less than God or do we confess the
mystery that was promised in the third chapter of Genesis that the woman would
bear the Son who would be our deliverer? For the Christian the image of every
Jewish woman bringing her son to temple or synagogue to be circumcised became
an illustration of faith looking forward to a day when a young woman would
bring her son to the temple that he might be circumcised, and given the name
Jesus, and entered into the Old Covenant that he might save his people from
their sins. Through faith every woman who brought her child to be enrolled into
the covenant of promise joined the virgin who brought her son to be enrolled in
the covenant as the answer to all the prayers of those who through the
centuries had been seeking a city of God and a better country than could be
found on earth. On the eighth day of Jesus’ life Mary presented her son to be
circumcised, enrolled in the covenant, and given the name Jesus because he
would save his people from their sins. An old age began to fade as a new one
began. Jesus entered the old on our behalf that we might enter the new through
his fulfillment of the Old. Mary brought to fullness the hopes of Eve in her
pains of childbirth. So on New Year’s Day we celebrate, look back, look forward
and yearn to grow in the newness of new life.
The old gives way to the new beginning the eighth day
