What Do We Celebrate at New Years?

Yes, indeed. Happy New Year! Having said that, I have long puzzled over the significance of January 1. It seems to be an accounting and tax convenience but have little if any real significance. As you might expect from me, The first of Advent seems like the real beginning of the year and the journey through the liturgical calendar which traces the life of Jesus and the Church. As kid, the first day of school in September (definitely not August that seems to have become common) made sense as the beginning of the year. I could make an astronomical case for the winter solstice after which the days lengthen, or an agricultural case for spring equinox to celebrate the new growing season (the Hebrew calendar recognizes a new year with spring planting and another one with fall harvest). I'm not really complaining or expecting any sort of change, just sharing my reflections on the 71st New Year's Day of my life. What were we all celebrating last night - the closing of financial books? We somehow endue each year with a significance that we are usually happy to leave behind and welcome something new. Though we don't really leave the old year behind but have to live with its consequences in the new year, yet perhaps we are celebrating the persistence of hope in the human heart. Isn't that the message of the Hebrew prophets we heard through Advent: hope in God in the face of the most devastating events and circumstances? Isn't that what rises from the Gospel: through Christ hope of being freed from our past sins to live into a gloriously free future? I doubt many in Times Square were thinking about that last night, but it seems so much better to me than partying for partying sake in the vague farewell to one calendar year and hello to the next with no real anchor for hope. Interestingly, the Christian symbol for hope has long been an anchor, which few of us understand today. In the days of sailing ships we could consider small, the anchor was the hope of surviving a storm. Tied to the bow of the ship, it kept the ship facing into the wind so it could ride up and down the waves without being capsized, and when it was doing its job, the anchor was unseen. Our hope in Christ is not seen ("who hopes for what is seen?" Romans 8:24) and faces us into the storms of life (rather than fleeing to a futile imaginary save harbor). So though January 1 seems not to celebrate anything specific (unless you are a tax accountant), it does give us opportunity to affirm and celebrate that Christ had taken us through the storms of the past year and can be depended on to take us through the coming storms.