New Year as a holiday is something that I struggle to place. It is something of an extra day off in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas. One celebrated by the traditional football games: Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange and Fiesta. (Slipping into the book of American Leviticus 23, “And you shall celebrate this New Year with parades and the blowing of the marching band Trumpet…:.
Somewhat famously the pilgrims, Puritans by religious sect, did not celebrate Christmas. Compared to the Lutheran Reformation which kept everything that could be kept, which included the liturgical church year, the Reformed tradition went by a strict principle. If it could not be justified by biblical practice, then it was not allowed. The Lord’s Day – Sunday – was justified. The disciples gathered on the Lord’s Day after the resurrection. Christmas somehow was not. It was a deemed a pagan intrusion into the well regulated calendar of Lord’s Days. The Lutheran understanding in these regards is more anything not forbidden is allowed. And God did not say “you shall not celebrate Christmas with a 12 day festival.” But New Year is one of those odd days. There is a command or biblical warrant about it. In actual Leviticus 23 it is the Feast of Trumpets. You get a bit more in Numbers 29. It is known today as Rosh Hoshana or the Jewish New Year. So the Puritans down to the Presbyterians often held New Years. It is amusing to me how very early in my life many American Lutherans adopted New Year services to blend in with the general American Reformed religious environment, but the secular commercial juggernaut of America has forced everyone into Christmas, which ends the morning of the 26th of December. All the sharp distinctives of yesteryear become dull.
Maybe my confusion isn’t all that new. Those ancient Israelites had at least two New Years. The festival of trumpets, Rosh Hoshana, was the first of the civil calendar, but it was in the seventh month of the religious calendar which started in the month of Nisan which held Passover. Every religious year passed through Passover, Pentecost and Sukkot – the travel festivals. Jewish mysticism holds that the Civil New Year is the day the world was created and once a year the Trumpet of God – the Festival of Trumpets – is blown to wake it up again. It is the day that God decides this old earth gets another year. Which the Apostle Paul picks up in 1 Corinthians 15:52, “and the Trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” The Resurrection as the New Year of the New Creation. A different Trumpet bringing in a New Life and a New Creation.
Until we all hear that much different Trumpet, the words of a Christmas Hymn that I love reflect for me more a Spirit of New Year. The secular celebration seems to be about new births – the New Year’s baby, the resolutions, the re-upping of the gym memberships. New births that never really live up to the hoped for new Trumpet when we shall all be changed. The hymn Stars of Glory has a different reflection.
Stars of glory, shine more brightly/Purer be the moonlight’s beam;
Glide ye hours and moments lightly/Swiftly down time’s deepening stream.
Bring the hour that banished sadness/Brought redemption down to earth,
When the shepherds heard with gladness/Tidings of a Savior’s birth.
Mary gathered up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The hours of this old earth glide lightly by, but each adds to a deepening stream. Each brings us closer to that final hour that banishes sadness. Happy New Year.