New Year(s)

2012, the year I graduate, the year the world ends, the year that many people will die and many more will be born. A year that I have been looking forward to for a rather long time.

New Year's, a holiday, which like snow and rain and other such cleansing precipitation reminds me and many others of fresh starts. Where we reevaluate our lives and the direction that we have been going in and try to make drastic changes overnight in hopes that this time it will FINALLY be different and we will FINALLY have the fortitude to keep the promises we've made to ourselves. Deep down we know that this will not be the case, but humans are a forever optimistic bunch and love to fool themselves.

To be honest, New Year's has always felt like a very hollow holiday to me. Sometimes I am convinced that the only real reason that Americans keep it around is so that they can justify saying "Happy Holidays" around this particular portion of the winter. If New Years were suddenly to stop existing, they might be forced to start saying "Merry Christmas" again. The horror!

I suppose that if New Year's went away we would simply make a holiday revolving around football. My dad cheers on the Browns from his iPad as they go against the Steelers. 5 seconds left for a touchdown and they win. Will they? WILL THEY?! Oop, nope. All done, Steelers have bragging rights for another year.

Joking aside, why do Americans get so excited about New Year's? It feels so artificial, so fake, and yet we relish the idea of new starts so much that we cling to this odd holiday like a scared baby baboon to his mother. We are such an apologetic culture, we feel guilty for everything that goes wrong in the world. Some of the most prolific and effective advertisements in the USA are the ones that prey upon our innate guilt. "Don't you DARE hurt mother earth!" "You have so much, this poor kid has nothing. You aren't giving to him? You suck!!" It's condescending and base, and yet we gobble it up like Thanksgiving stuffing.

We want to feel clean and whole and new so badly. We want redemption, and we are looking for it in all the wrong places. There is nothing significant about a new calendar year that will miraculously cause you to be a better person. You are no better at cooking on the 1st of January than you were on the 31st of December. The passing of 24 hours does not make it easier for you to put down that cigarette.

So what gives us this fresh start, this new beginning that we all so desperately desire? Well... think back a week, exactly 7 days. What was seven days ago? Christmas. Christmas is the real new start. Christmas is the day that we commemorate which changed everything. It changed the shape of human history and is the root of new beginnings. Of course this new beginning was in the making since the beginning of time. But for those of us confined by timey-whimey stuff, December 25, AD 4ish marked the true beginning, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. (I'm going off of the documentary The Star of Bethlehem for the validity of the the 25th as the actual date of Christ's birth.)

In the 33 years of his life, the Godhead used Christ's ministry and walk to alter the course of history. "Time can be rewritten." (And yes, I am going to continue to randomly insert Doctor Who references.) God used this to "Subdue the nations" and "use them as a footstool." Christ's birth cannot but be viewed in conjunction with His death, the are the beginning and the end of the same story. Anyone familiar with Old Yeller cannot think about the story without the context of how she began as a loyal family dog and ended as a rabid animal that needed to be put down. Simply saying "Old Yeller" often brings all that to mind.

Similarly, when someone mentions "Christmas" we ought to not only think of Christ's nativity, but also His death and how we would redeem all the world. Images of subjecting demons and healing the sick and the blind ought to leap to mind at the thought of Christmas. It is one story. It is one narrative.

Not only must we keep the grand narrative in mind, but we must also realize that Christmas, NOT the hollow celebration of New Year's, is the true new beginning. The Almighty Creator of the universe sent a part of Himself to come and not only change the Russian novel that is life, but through this act, He granted His own creations the ability to change themselves. Not only this, God helps us STAY changed, and that is what we so desperately look for in New Year's resolutions. But we cannot, and will never be able to muster the ability to stay changed ourselves. It must come externally. It must come from Christmas.

Christmas is the start of the new year... and is in fact the start of ALL the new years to follow. Christmas is my new beginning.

Cheers,
JSTT