This is my second question to Chaim for the January 20 Ask JTF. What do JTF Christians think about the Secularization of The Christian New Year?

[admin]

I'm posting this for Yacov Menashe Ben Rachamim.

Thank you for answering my question about The Secular New Year. Do you consider it to be a Christian holiday?

Also, please read the entire paragraph below and answer the question at the end.

In Christianity, January 1 as The New Year marks Jesus's brit milah since he is said to have been born on December 25, therefore making his brit on January 1, 1 C.E.. However, many Christians just think it a time to party. What do you think of the Christians who party for it instead of going to church?

How would a Christian answer my question to Chaim?

[Ambiorix]

brit milah?

[Ambiorix]

thanks

[Ambiorix]

Actually the Catholic Church says this :

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03779a.htm

As paganism passed away the religious festivities of the Circumcision became more conspicuous and solemn; yet, even in the tenth century, Atto, Bishop of Vercelli, rebuked those who profaned the holy season by pagan dances, songs, and the lighting of lamps.

so that means going out, dancing,...  according to the Xth century Bishop is wrong.

[Ambiorix]

so that means going out, dancing,...  according to the Xth century Bishop is wrong.

So do you agree with him?

Last year Chaim answered my question on New Year's Eve saying that it was pagan in origin.

1 As paganism passed away the religious festivities of the Circumcision became more conspicuous and solemn; yet, even in the tenth century, Atto, Bishop of Vercelli, rebuked those who profaned the holy season by pagan dances, songs, and the lighting of lamps.

2 In the ages of paganism, however, the solemnization of the feast was almost impossible, on account of the orgies connected with the Saturnalian festivities, which were celebrated at the same time. Even in our own day the secular features of the opening of the New Year interfere with the religious observance of the Circumcision, and tend to make a mere holiday of that which should have the sacred character of a Holy Day. St. Augustine points out the difference between the pagan and the Christian manner of celebrating the day: pagan feasting and excesses were to be expiated by Christian fasting and prayer

3 Catholic Liturgical new year (from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year)

On the Catholic liturgical calendar used by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church (and other churches descended from it such as the Anglican and Lutheran Churches) the new liturgical year begins at 4pm on the Saturday preceding the fourth Sunday prior to December 25.
i.e. Saturday 1 December 2007.

So, 1.2.3 show us the feast/party/drinking/... of New-Year has nothing to with the Christian Religion,
it was even impossible to incorporate the Jesus's brit milah. The tradition is coming from the pre-Christian period.

4 The Feast of the Circumcision was kept at an early date in the Gallican Rite, as is clearly indicated in a Council of Tours (567), in which he Mass of the Circumcision is prescribed (Con. Tur., II., can. xvii in Labbe, V, 857). The feast celebrated at Rome in the seventh century was not the Circumcision as such, but the octave of Christmas. The Gelasian Sacramentary gives the title "In Octabas Domini", and prohibits the faithful from idolatry and the profanities of the season (P. L., LXXIV, 1061). The earliest Byzantine calendars (eighth and ninth centuries) give for the first of January both the Circumcision and the anniversary of St. Basil. The Feast of the Circumcision was observed in Spain before the death of St. Isidore (636), for the "Regula Monachorum", X, reads: "For it hath pleased the Fathers to appoint a holy season from the day of the Lord's birth to the day of His Circumcision" (P.L., LXXXIII, 880). It seems, therefore, that the octave was more prominent in the early centuries, and the Circumcision later.

4 says the "octave" 8th day was used in an early stage , instead of the Feast of the Circumcision.

[Ambiorix]

The question : What do JTF Christians thinks about the Secularization of The Christian New Year?

I think the answer is very simple:

Christianity never eradicated the Yule traditions of the German tribes of the pre-Christian period.
In ancient Rome they had orgies during the Saturnalian festivities.

Contemporary Yule Traditions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule
Many of the symbols and motifs associated with the modern holiday of Christmas are derived from traditional pagan northern European Yule celebrations. The burning of the Yule log, the decorating of Christmas trees, the eating of ham, the hanging of boughs, holly, mistletoe, etc. are all historically practices associated with Yule. When the Christianization of the Germanic peoples began, missionaries found it convenient to provide a Christian reinterpretation of popular pagan holidays such as Yule and allow the celebrations themselves to go on largely unchanged, versus trying to confront and suppress them. The Scandinavian tradition of slaughtering a pig at Christmas (see Christmas ham) is probably salient evidence of this. The tradition is thought to be derived from the sacrifice of boars to the G-d Freyr at the Yule celebrations. Halloween and aspects of Easter celebrations are likewise assimilated from northern European pagan festivals.
English historian Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the pagan Anglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory suggested that converting heathens would go easier if they were allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards the Christian G-d instead of to their pagan "devils": "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of G-d". [5]

New Year was a pagan Feast.
It became christianised during a couple of centuries.
The Church was not able to fulfil the policy of making 1 January a Solemn New Year.

The Catholic Church has a liturgical New Year, that doesn't coincide with the Feast of the Circumcision.

Today 1st of January is not being perceived by Christians as a religious day. (my opinion)
that doesn't mean it is "just another day"
It is a tradition that is older than Christianity, and we will keep it, along with the Christmas-three.
Christmas in Denmark, is still called Yule.

[Ambiorix]

On the contrary.
The pre-Christian Yule-tradition must be kept.

[Dexter]

Scholers says Jesus was born at 4 B.C.E.

[ftf]

I personally think that New Year celebrations are a waste of time, Christmas is a Christian festival which I think is great, but New Year, what is there to celebrate? It's just time passing, it's the 8th day of Christmas, it doesn't need to be anything else as well.

[Ambiorix]

On the contrary.
The pre-Christian Yule-tradition must be kept.

But why would a Christian such as yourself support returning to those pagan customs?

I don't consider Christmas-rituals as pagan. I consider it as pre-Christian.
The roots are pagan, but the Church never rooted out pagan customs. Well it tried
(Inquisition etc,...)
Maybe TV/atheism/mcDonalds does the job now.

People become mass-Christianised, when their King converted.
But none of the people knew Latin, and just had to physically attend the Mass,
but the Mass was celebrated in Latin, by the priests, with their back to the people, sometimes behind iron gates.

Christianity wouldn't be Christian if it hadn't incorporated and gently transformed these customs.
"Paganism" is part of the Western culture.

The nazis wanted to get rid of Christianity, as they saw it as a semitical ideology that crippled Europe for 2000 years.
That's why they wanted to go back to the "pure" German rite.

[Ambiorix]

Not in my opinion.
Nazism is a satanic cult that used even Hindu religion etc...

[Sarah]

New years day has become a secular holiday, especially since people of all faiths celebrate it in some ways, even if they have their own new year.

[Ambiorix]

The nazis wanted to get rid of Christianity, as they saw it as a semitical ideology that crippled Europe for 2000 years.
That's why they wanted to go back to the "pure" German rite.

That's even more of a reason to be against it.

The paganism of Germans/Celts/Slavs/ 2000 years ago is not the trigger for the Holocaust.
Xenophobia, ultra-nationalism, communism, anti-semitism, politics, treason, anti-Jewish Christian beliefs are.

[Kiwi]

hmmm funny I thought the question was for gentiles to answer 

[Ambiorix]

the answer remains: the old religion/practises/costumes were incorporated.

[Kiwi]

hmmm funny I thought the question was for gentiles to answer 

I asked her to comment on it. And it said Christians, not Gentiles. By the way, she is a Gentile but not a Christian.

She closer to being a Jew and really I think she was asked to support your case.

As converts are one sided at the best of times.

Thats Unfair and not honourable.

Only full gentiles should answer.

[Kiwi]

By the way, she is a Gentile

And I hope that will change soon, someday!

You hope? Mills I was assuming you are committed. Or are you?

[Kiwi]

You know what's weird? Why are our answers shown as quotes?

Well, anyways, don't worry. My soul is already "in", its just that my body needs to make it official by going to classes, lol! I wrote "hope" because I hope it happens soon and not in a long time. Some people who "convert" already have Jewish souls.

I know is a weird thing in the software once in a while 

Ok cool Mills, I suddenly thought what? You are changing your mind, after all this time.   

[Kiwi]

You know what's weird? Why are our answers shown as quotes?

Well, anyways, don't worry. My soul is already "in", its just that my body needs to make it official by going to classes, lol! I wrote "hope" because I hope it happens soon and not in a long time. Some people who "convert" already have Jewish souls.

I know is a weird thing in the software once in a while 

Ok cool Mills, I suddenly thought what? You are changing your mind, after all this time.   

LOL. No, I could never change my mind, because it is not my mind that makes me do it. Its a passion in my soul that guides me. When someone makes a superficial decision they just think about, its easy to change their mind, but when someone is guided by their soul they can never change that.

Then how can you post as a gentile when you know that is a false apart of you?

[Kiwi]

You know what's weird? Why are our answers shown as quotes?

Well, anyways, don't worry. My soul is already "in", its just that my body needs to make it official by going to classes, lol! I wrote "hope" because I hope it happens soon and not in a long time. Some people who "convert" already have Jewish souls.

I know is a weird thing in the software once in a while 

Ok cool Mills, I suddenly thought what? You are changing your mind, after all this time.   

LOL. No, I could never change my mind, because it is not my mind that makes me do it. Its a passion in my soul that guides me. When someone makes a superficial decision they just think about, its easy to change their mind, but when someone is guided by their soul they can never change that.

Then how can you post as a gentile when you know that is a false apart of you?

Because while my soul already is Jewish, my body is still gentile, until the day that I'm finally recognized as a Jew by my community (the Jewish community). So right now I can still do gentile things, as much as it pains me, but I will give it all up to be Jewish already.

your body has little to do with anything, your soul is more important. You have a soul of a Jew therefore you are inessence a Jew. Only time will make you whole. But in truth you are also not a gentile.
You are in transition therefore really not one or the other. You past from the old to the New, always moving forward.

[Kiwi]

You know what? You are SOOO right! Your words completely describe me! I guess because other Jews I know try to make me feel more like a gentile right now, I've taking it passively. You have made an excellent point! Thanks.

No worries Mills, for the record I see you as a Jewess already, you make a very fine addition to the sisterhood. 

Apart of beginning a sister is speaking up, being proud and strong for who you are. 

You have my full respect for it.

[Kiwi]

You know what's weird? Why are our answers shown as quotes?

Well, anyways, don't worry. My soul is already "in", its just that my body needs to make it official by going to classes, lol! I wrote "hope" because I hope it happens soon and not in a long time. Some people who "convert" already have Jewish souls.

I know is a weird thing in the software once in a while 

I fixed it. There was an exta quote in there.

thanks Yacov