from the rector
January 2010
I remember as a child
wondering if I would be around to see the year 2000. (Mainly, I
couldn't
imagine being the advanced age of 49.) It's hard to believe that in
just a few
days we'll celebrate New Year's Day 2010.
At least here, in this
culture – but not everywhere. The old Roman New Years' Day was
March 1 until
Julius Caesar changed it, and it was March 25 in English speaking
countries
until 1753 – before that it was celebrated on Christmas Day. For
500 years France
celebrated New Years' Day on Easter Sunday. Tamil Indians celebrate
January 14
(as do many Eastern Orthodox). Chinese New Year falls on the first new
moon
after January 21. Sikhs celebrate New Year on March 14, Iranians on the
vernal
equinox, Balinese on March 26. It really doesn't matter as long as the
year has
365 days with an occasional addition of one every few years –
unless you're
Muslim, whose year has 354 days and is always celebrated 11 days
earlier than
the year before.
Let's not even get into
the
way we number the years, which is just as diverse and complicated...
The point is – the
way we
number our years, and the day we choose to celebrate as the beginning
of a new
one, are totally arbitrary. Every culture chooses a “starting
point” which has
meaning for them – whether it be the spring harvest, the annual
flooding of the
Nile, the founding of Rome – so that the year refers to something
important.
Our New Years' Day is
chosen
because it is the Feast of the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When
we
chose it to be New Years' Day, we were saying that the days of our year
were to
be lived under the name of Jesus – the name to which “every
knee shall bow, and
every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord”.
That's also why we number
of
years from the time when he came among us. (We probably don't have it
exactly
right, but that's our intent). When we number the Years as either
“Before
Christ” or “Anno Domini” (Year of our Lord”) we
are proclaiming that his coming
is the central event in world history.
The point is simple: Jesus
is the fixed reference point of our years and days. May he be the fixed
reference point of our daily lives – our thoughts, our prayers,
our actions, as
well.
Yours in Christ,
David Garrett