I spent all day yesterday thinking my mother-inlaw may be insane. The first thing she sad on the phone to us yesterday was “Happy Circumcision Day!” When I asked her what the heck she meant, she said that New Years Day is actually celebrating Jesus’ bris.
A quick Googling this morning shows me that she’s not alone in this idea - must have picked it up somewhere - but I don’t find any cites as to why this is believed to be the reason for New Years.
I am **not not not ** looking for a debate on circumcision itself (that is for another thread), just something substantive to either affirm or refute the idea that the “real” reason New Years Day is celebrated just after Christmas is because it is the aniversary of Jesus’ Bris.
Sounds pretty odd to me, espcecially since Jesus’ birth wasn’t even on Dec 25. Most people put it in the March - April time frame. It was moved to December to coincide with Pagan rituals in order to try and bring them to Christianity.
It is in some of the Anglican church calendars. Here’s a link to the Table of Lessons from the 1922 revision of the Book of Common Prayer. You’ll see that the feast day of the Circumcision fits right in between December 31 and the second Sunday after Christmas. Doesn’t specifically say January 1, but I think that’s the case.
Haven’t found a more recent table of lessons than 1922, so don’t know if still is. I would think probably. Revisions to the calendar normally relate to minor saints and matters of local import, not to commemorations of events in Jesus’s life. They tend to stay in.
But to say that’s the real reason New Year’s Day is celebrated - I would say it only applies for those who are actually follow the idea of a liturgical calendar, and follow this particular liturgical calendar. I would think most people celebrate it for purely secular reasons.
I’d be interested to hear from some of posters of other denominations that follow a liturgical calendar, like Bricker or yBeaf.
Just checked the calendar of the Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada. January 1 is listed as the “Naming of Jesus”. It’s a holy day, which means it takes priority over the usual Sunday readings when it falls on a Sunday.
There’s no doubt that a baby boy born on Dec. 25 would, according to traditional Jewish law, be circumcised on Jan. 1 (unless, perhaps, it was a Saturday). It’s not surprising that a liturgy would commemorate this. It does not follow that the reason for celebrating New Year’s day is “really” Jesus’ circumcision. This could just be coincidence, and it’s not as though the New Year goes uncelebrated in other cultures with different calendars. I’m not sure whether the OP is suggesting that the year starts when it does because of the circumcision, or merely that the reason that we celebrate the day has more to do with the circumcision than with the New Year. It was certainly the first of the month long before Christianity came along.
Even if it’s on a Saturday. Unless the time of birth was questionable (not certain if it was day or night, as days in Jewish law begin at nightfall), a healthy baby boy born on the Sabbath will have his bris on the following Sabbath.
It’s the Feast of the Holy Name in the Episcopal Church, commemorating the eighth day of (one week after) Christmas, when Jesus was circumcized and received His name. For Catholics, it’s a solemnity of Mary, though what its exact name is or why she happens to be honored that day in particular I don’t have a clue.
(The way I figure it, if the Feast of Candlemas, commemorating Jesus’s Presentation in the Temple and Mary’s Purification after Childbirth, got taken over by a ground squirrel, the least we can do is to reclaim New Years Day for a Mohel!
January 1 used to be recorded as the Feast of the Circumcision in the Catholic Church, but it got changed to the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God as its primary name back as part of Vatican II changes IIRC.
The day always celebrated both events. Catholics enjoy having Marian feasts. Three of them are holy days of obligation (Jan. 1, Aug. 15, Dec. 8).
The Catholic Church also refers to January 1 as the International Day for Peace.
Most Catholics blow off church attendance on New Year’s Day. We have our limits.
Any clue why it’s special to her? I sort of implied that question in the “Catholics” part of my earlier post. I can fully understand commemorating the Immaculate Conception, the Annunciation, the Assumption… but what about Jan. 1 is particularly oriented towards Mary?
Since the 1960s, the RCC has seemed pretty ambivalent about what they want to celebrate on January 1 (at least in the U.S.). They changed the name from Circumcision to “Feast within Octave of Christmas” for a while and I have a vague memory of some other feast name being wedged in there for a year or two before it became “The Octave Day of Christmas: Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God.” (There has never been any pretense that the religious feasts were the “reason” for the celebration.) I have never heard why we began de-emphasizing the circumcision on this day. (Neither the “octave” not the Solemnity of Mary are really a problem; as the Catholic Encyclopedia notes in my link, there has always been a tradition of recognizing Mary in the ceremonies of this feast and for years the formal title was In Circumcisione Domini et Octav Nativitatis.
Probably because, to most modern Catholics, Jesus’ circumcision doesn’t seem like a terribly noteworthy event. Certainly not as important as his birth, his death, or his resurrection.
As to what the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God celebrates: It’s really just a generic Marian holy day. At least, that’s the way it’s been treated in every New Year’s service I’ve ever been to. I really think that it’s little more than a replacement for the Circumcision of Jesus.
Also, Catholic parents probably got tired of evading their children’s question as to what was that “circumcision” thing. Serious :eek: moment when they can avoid the subject no longer, I’m telling ya…
The celebration of the feast of the Circumcision was first downplayed in 1960 when the *motu proprio * of Pope John XXIII, Rubricarum Instructum, declared 1 January to be the Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord.
Later, post Vatican II, the liturgical status of 1 January was altered again, to become the solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. This feast (celebrating Our Lady’s status as Theotokos, as defined in 431 at the Council of Ephesus) had previously (pre Vatican II) been celebrated as a second class feast on 11 October.
Orthodox keep it too – new calendar folk on Jan. 1, and old calendar folk on Jan. 14. It’s also the feast of St. Basil. It’s not a major feast, but most parishes celebrate it, if only because there’s so many Orthodox named Basil / Vasili.
It may have been de-emphasized by Vatican II, but I recall it being taught to us in Catholic school throughout the 1960s that Jan. 1 was the Feast of the Circumcision. This, naturally, prompted us inquisitive youngsters to ask what a “circumcision” was. The nuns utilized the same elaborate sidestep they used when explaining to us what the sixth commandment was (“Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” – and before you say anything, note that the Catholics humber the commandments differently than the Protestants or Jews). “Circumcision,” they said, means “He was offered up to God.” It was years before I found out what “circumcision” really meant, and that I had, myself, been circumcized.
Still, it surprised the hell out of Pepper Mill when I told her about what Jan. 1 was.
The ancient Romans originally established New Year’s Day as January 1. Since Jesus hadn’t been born yet, his bris obviously played no part in this selection.
During subsequent centuries, however, most of Europe seems to have drifted away from this practice. England celebrated New Year’s on March 25, and other countries used March 1 or April 1 or sundry other dates.
At some point, everybody reverted to the earlier Roman practice. I’m not sure when or why. The shift back is often attributed to the changeover from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which happened in Catholic countries in 1582. However, the papal bull establishing the Gregorian calendar is silent as to New Year’s Day.
By the time Great Britain made the change in 1752, the two conversions were definitely synchronized–the same law ordering the change from Julian to Gregorian also moved New Year’s Day to January 1. The reason given was that the March New Year’s “differs from the Usage of neighbouring Nations”.
So the question remains, when and why did the Catholic countries revert to New Year’s on January 1? If it was in fact ordered by the Church, they may have cited the religious association with the “octave of Christmas” as a justification. If anyone has a cite one way or the other, I’d love to see it.
