Happy New Year

The ancients began their new year at the beginning of Spring--March 25, and the ancient Christian tradition had it that the world was created on March 25. They also believed that the stars aligned so that great men died on the same day they were conceived. Jesus Christ died on March 25 of that year, so his conception (it was believed) took place on March 25. This crucial date is the turning point. An old year ends. A new year begins. An old order ends. A new order begins. An old covenant ends. A new covenant begins. Behold old things have passed away, all things have become new.

Why Gollum? Because J.R.R.Tolkien, in keeping with the ancient traditions, has the world being sung into creation in The Silmarillion on (you guessed it) March 25 and it is the same auspicious date that Sam and Frodo reach the Cracks of Doom and Gollum falls into the fires destroying the Ring of Power. So it is that Sauron falls and the reign of Aragorn, King of Gondor begins. Mr Covington reminds me that most scholars also place Dante's descent into Hell (and thus the beginning of his new life) on March 25.

Incidentally, the ancient importance of March 25 also gives the lie to those who say that the Christian feast of Christmas was instituted as competition for the pagan winter solstice festival of Sol Invictus. Not so. This conjecture was first mooted by Isaac Newton who thought Christmas was matched with the winter solstice and German Protestant theologian Paul Ernst Jablonski who suggested that it was an attempt to compete or at least baptized the pagan Sol Invictus celebration of December 25. Other Protestant writers assumed that Christmas was an attempt to baptize the Roman Saturnalia celebrations.These unsubstantiated assumptions seemed to make sense...so much so that it has achieved popular acceptance.

However, the date of Christmas is established not from the winter solstice or the Saturnalia or the Sol Invictus celebration, but from the preceding date of the Annunciation which had been determined by the historical date of the crucifixion and the tradition that the world was created on March 25. Both Tertullian (200) and Augustine (400) are familiar with the idea that Jesus was conceived on March 25, and it follows that they would have understood his birth to have been on December 25.

While there was a cult of the sun God throughout the ancient world, including Rome, there is no evidence of a December 25 celebration of his cult before the mid 300s AD. This suggests that the celebration of Sol Invictus on December 25 actually post dates the earliest celebrations of the Feast of the Nativity on December 25. Tertullian would have understood Christmas to be on December 25 in 200 and there are hints that the Nativity of Christ was celebrated in North Africa on December 25 from the early 200s. These hints imply an established, and therefore even earlier practice.Therefore the Sol Invictus celebrations on December may very well have been established in the mid 300s as competition with the newly established Christian faith along with it's aleady well established celebration of Our Lord's nativity on that date.

In other words, just the opposite of the popular anti Catholic myth. More about the dating of Christmas here.