In 46 BC the Roman emperor Julius Caesar first celebrated January 1 as the new year's day. Janue was the Roman god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. Caesar felt that the month named after this god (January) would be the appropriate "door" to the year. Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New year ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets. In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgies - a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.
Now, that is the origin of the New Year celebration, but a lot more went on as this holiday was taken over by English Kings, Popes and the confusion of calendars and powers. It went from being held on Jan 1, to March 25. One being Caesar's version and the other the early Christian version called Announcement Day celebrating the announcement by the Angel Gabriel that Mary would be impregnated by God. Eventually Pope Gregory XIII brought us back to the Julian calendar and the new year was again January 1. Pope Gregory, also brought us that trendy little year, what we now call Leap Year. The Julian calendar had an 18 hour miscalculation to it, and we thought Y2K was weird, this little mix up was going to throw the universe into total chaos, but Pope Gregory made an adjustment in our calendar and we are now safe and the cosmos is running as ordered.
For any of you that woke up this morning with a head ache ,now you know the reason why. One last note on the January 1 thing. The early Christians celebrated January 1 as the day Jesus was circumcised. Not that that day was the actual day, but it was chosen to celebrate the event. Can you begin to see why history, tradition and politics can really screw things up?
I have to accept this New Year thing due to the fact I need order and do need to know what year number to write on the one check a month I write to my church. Currently, we do not have a cash machine in the lobby. Writing checks are as common as showing your high school diploma when you apply for a job. Nice to have but rarely used.
2008 is not going down as a good year for most. For me I'm just happy to be alive, enjoying what ever comes my way. As Jack Nicholson once said about his life, "another day another $5000,000". Oh, to be so charmed. I do hope some things do change in 2009, like never hearing the word "Green". If another corporation announces it is going Green, I'm lighting a set of tires on fire in my drive way. How about "bailout"? The term was once reserved for crooks and really bad people, now it is the reward for being a incompetent, overpaid, out of touch Executive. We have a new form of economic terrorism, weapons of mass financial destruction. Held by the terrorist organization known as, Justice for the overly wealthy and lazy. One good thing that 2008 did for us was it brought an end to the "election" mania that began as far back as 2007. I now suffer from election Bolemia. When ever I hear anything concerning an election I purge immediately. I do believe that if God intended us to have elections He would have given us candidates (old joke I know, but it fits).
It does appear that that my post are a tad on the negative side of things, what do you think? Negative, is defined as something that is in denial, disagreement or refusal. I think I'm safely in the that zone on these matters. As an observer one must see "what is" and learn from "what was". Adlie Stevenson said: The definition of free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular".
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