Saturday,
12/31/11
This is
the last day of the year, and many people see the old year out with parties
when they dress up, blow horns and beat on pans. These customs have deep,
pre-historic roots.
In the
1970’s American Catholics were poled as to what feast days they wanted to keep
as holy days of obligation. Most people wanted to keep New Years Day as a holy
day of obligation, and that was a surprise, because most of them were not sure
what the day celebrated. Their attachment to the day came down to them from
ancestors who lived before humanity learned how to read and write.
What we
find in studying prehistoric peoples in Africa, Asia, and America is that New
Years recalled the creation of the world. Oddly enough, most peoples believed
that at the beginning everything was chaos, and creation consisted in God or a
number of gods bringing order out of chaos.
Even our
Bible shared that ancient view. In its opening words it says, “In the beginning
when God created the heavens and the earth the earth was a formless wasteland.
The original Hebrew words for “formless waste land” was tohu-bohu, which
sounded like clothes being spun around in a dryer.
In
Japanese lore the gods came down on Mt. Fuji from where they pushed back chaos,
creating a holy place where people could live. With Hindus and Buddhists the
gods came down on Mt. Meru. In the legends of Iraq it was a struggle between
male and female gods that bought forth a world we could live in.
Tonight,
if you make merry, you might bring to mind the thought that like people for
thousands of years back you are recreating the original chaos out of which we
pray God will bring holy orderliness.
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