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This blog grows out of my conviction that every aspect of our lives is sacred and is to be nurtured and celebrated as a good gift of God. Most of the posts will be the sorts of things you would expect from a historian and worldview teacher, but some are likely to be a bit surprising. Since God created all things good, including all aspects of human life, everything is interesting and important from the perspective of a biblical worldview. Everything under the Sun and under Heaven is thus fair game here. I hope you find it interesting and enjoyable.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

On the Eighth Day of Christmas

Today is the eighth day of Christmas. For those who don’t know, in western Christianity Christmas is a twelve day feast, ending on January 5 (Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”) just prior to January 6, the Feast of Epiphany when we celebrate the arrival of the Magi to worship Jesus and thus look ahead to the spread of the Gospel to all the peoples of the earth.
It is very unlikely that Jesus was actually born on December 25. That date was selected for reasons I explain here. But the date actually has serendipity about it because it makes January 1 the eighth day of Christmas. Consider:
  • On the eighth day after his birth, following the Law of Moses, Jesus was circumcised.
  • January is named after Janus, the Roman god with two faces, one looking backwards to the past, the other forwards to the future.
  • So on the first day of the month that looks back to the past and forward to the future, we celebrate Jesus’ circumcision, looking back to the Old Testament even as we look forward to the inauguration of the New Covenant through Jesus’ work.
This wasn’t the reason December 25 was selected as the Feast of the Nativity (a.k.a. Christmas), but there is something appropriate about it. It also gives additional meaning to the start of the New Year.
And with that, I wish you all a very happy and blessed New Year.
amhn ercou kurie ihsou. (Rev. 22:20b)