Maybe the traditional ball drops are smbolic of that fateful event.
elmwood <-- :wally
The Church New Year is Sep. 1, which is when the year count from the beginning of creation (five thousand, seven hundred something years ago, according to the Orthodox reckoning) increases another year.
And what do they serve at the Feast of the Circumcision, calamari?
Since it’s also the feast of St. Basil, it’s customary to eat a lot of dishes cooked with basil, and fresh basil as well.
Hey, imagine you’re a Mom, watching your baby boy get clipped… wouldn’t you be damn solemn!?! 
I thought Jewish law required circumcision eight days after a boy’s birth. I guess this is another one of those times where the ancients would have said he was already one day old at the moment of birth? I marvel at the fact that people were able to live without the concept of zero for so long.
I remember the modest young nun who was my first grade teacher, being confusingly evasive when trying to explain what the feast celebrated. Apparently it was about snipping off a piece of skin “near His thighs,” as she put it.
That has been the conventional wisdom for some time. But the opposite may have been true.
MaceMan:
No, it requires circumcision on the baby’s eighth day of life, which would be seven days after the birthday, which is the first day of life.
Living without the concept of using a mathematical placeholder in a decimal number system does not mean that not having a concept of “nothing” or, in this case, “no time.”
Here is some more information. Between the Dark Ages and the Sixteenth Century, almost all Christian countries drifted away from celebrating New Year’s on January 1. The Catholic Church seems to have encouraged this drift, since January 1 was associated with earlier pagan New Year rites. Beginning in 1508, however, a wave of countries began reverting to January 1:
These switches (except for the last) predated the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, and were not driven by the Catholic Church. The Church didn’t get around to recognizing January 1 as New Year’s until 1622.
It’s easy to see why standardization might have been desirable in the 1500’s; it was an early era of globalization what with the printing press and increasing international trade. But why January 1? Europe rediscovered its pre-Christian heritage during the Renaissance, and pagan models seemed less disreputable during this era (as can be seen in Renaissance art and architecture). It may be that reverting to the Roman New Year’s presented the easiest compromise among the hodgepodge of medieval New Year dates. But I’m not sure; research continues.
Oh, and that was another good one in my context… in Spanish, when using the archaic language of the official version of the catechism, that commandment is “No fornicar” (the Latin fornicatio referring generically to all forms of nonmarital or extramarital sex).
Boy was THAT one the parents had to run from
Meaning of course the archaic ritual Spanish that my parents and teachers learned it in – I lived thru when it changed to “Do not commit impure acts” (more obfuscation).
And of course, a whole bunch of us wee ones started off believing “Virgin” was actually just Mary’s first name, not really a word that described anything…