… and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:5).
What is the point of celebrating the coming of a new year?
After all, is not the marking of the new year merely a matter of an ordinary transition on the calendar? Don’t we observe a new year every year? In 45 BC, Julius Caesar, who held the position of dictator of the Roman Republic, instituted the Julian calendar to replace the old Roman calendar. The Julian calendar measured the passage of a year at 365 and a quarter days, and the leap year was instituted every four years. But the Julian calendar was eleven minutes and fourteen seconds off the actual time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun. In 1582, this temporal drift was corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, which at that time added ten days to the calendar.
The Gregorian calendar was accepted in Western Europe, but Great Britain did not come around to making the adjustment till 1752, and Russia, not until 1918. Sometimes on old graves, you will see dates rendered as “O.S.,” meaning “Old Style,” such as Thomas Jefferson’s grave. His birthdate is rendered “April 2, 1743 O.S.” on his grave at Monticello. Russians call their revolution the “October Revolution,” but the Bolsheviks took over on Nov. 7, 1917, according to the Gregorian calendar. Since they still used the old Julian calendar at that time, they marked the coming into power of the Bolsheviks on Oct. 25.
Isn’t New Year’s Day then just a matter of an observance on a contrived calendar style? To a pedantic cynic, perhaps. But for a Christian, New Year’s Day is a reminder of our hope in Christ.
For one thing, we measure our years by the birth of the Lord Jesus. True, it is now the practice of most academic historians to divide history into the categories of “Common Era” (C.E.) and “Before the Common Era” (B.C.E.), having abandoned the old classifications of A.D. (Anno Domine, or, Year of Our Lord) and B.C. (Before Christ). Despite the best efforts of secular historians who would like us to move on from such Christo-centric customs, the miraculous Incarnation of the God-Man is still the frame of reference for how we mark the passage of time (a delicious irony). Every time you write or type the month, day, and year on a page, you are observing the reality of the what the Old Testament prophets foretold about the coming of a Savior, going all the way back to the protoevangelium, the “first good news,” of Genesis 3:15—“And I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman [Eve], and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
Click Here to Read More (Originally Published at World Magazine)
John is a professor of church history and philosophy and chairman of the Church History Department at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
