December 25, 2000

Merry Christmas, Whatever Year This Is

Today, Dec. 25, 2000, is either the first Christmas of the third millennium or the last Christmas of the second millennium. Some say the millennium really ends this Dec. 31 because there was no year Zero, and last year's global celebration was a year premature.

Of course, they could be wrong, too.

Calendar experts say we're off a few years and it might be 2004 AD or 2005 AD already - AD standing for the Latin phrase 'anno Domini,' or 'year of our Lord.' Because of probable inaccuracies in time-keeping and calendars more than a thousand years ago, Jesus most likely was born in 3 or 4 BC. BC stands for "before Christ," which creates the odd truth that Jesus was born three or four years 'before Christ.'

This may be the fourth or fifth Christmas of the Third Millennium.

Then again, in China, where they calculate the passing of time on a lunar cycle calendar, this is year 4698 - year 4699, the next "Year of the Snake," doesn't start until January 24, 2001 AD.

In 1793, during the French Revolution, the French invented and a new Revolutionary calendar, with year one designated as having started on what users of the Gregorian calendar call September 22, 1792, the anniversary of a key event of the Revolution. The French revolutionaries created 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 or 6 leap days per year. Each month had three weeks of ten days, and the tradition of one day off every seven for prayer was scrapped - instead, the revolutionaries gave the peasants only one day in ten to attend a "temple of reason," which is what the churches were renamed. This French Revolutionary calendar was used from 1793 through December 31, 1805, until Napoleon re-instituted the Gregorian calendar and abolished the 'temples of reason," allowing religious peasants to once again worship God on the first day of each seven-day week.

The Christian calendar's 2001 AD coincides roughly with the Islamic year 1421 - but in Egypt, the Islamic calendar has no sway among that nation's six million Coptic Christians, who are getting ready for the year 1717. Their Year 1 is our AD 284, the year Diocletian, a ferocious persecutor of Christians, became emperor of Rome.

Neither the Third Millennium nor Christmas has much meaning for Jews - according to the Jewish calendar, we're living in the 58th century, in the year 5761. That's because the Hebrew calendar ignores the BC/AD split, and dates from the creation of the world, which the Hebrew calendar assumes to have happened 5,761 years ago, in what Christians would consider 3761 BC.

The Jewish New Year starts on the first day of the Hebrew month of Tishri, a day called Rosh Hashana, which celebrates the creation. There is a rather complicated set of five rules for determining the date of Rosh Hashana. This year, it fell on September 30

This time of the year, religious Jews observe a different holiday: Hanukkah, a celebration of a both a military victory against the Greeks, and a miracle.

More than 150 years before the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem, Greek civilization controlled Judea. A Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, sought to make Jerusalem a Greek city. He banned the Jewish religion, Sabbath observance and study of the Torah, and built an altar in the Temple and forced the Jews to make sacrifices to the Greek gods. Greeks erected altars to their gods in the streets of Jerusalem.

By the year Jews today call 167 BCE - that means "Before the Common Era" and coincides with the Christian BC calendar - the Jews had had enough. That year saw brought an armed revolt against Greek rule in Judea, sparked by an old priest, Matityahu, when he killed a Greek soldier who had tried to sacrifice swine on the altar in the village that was meant for sacrifices to Jehovah God. Matityahu fled, joined by his sons and other men. One of Matityahu's sons, Judah, then led the men into battle against the Greeks. He was called "Judah Maccabee." Maccabee is a Hebrew acrostic for the words "mi kamocha ba'elim hashem," which translates as "Who is like you among the gods, O Lord."

It was a rhetorical question - answered two years later in 165 BCE when the Maccabees, though badly outnumbered and overmatched, defeated Antiochus' army and liberated Jerusalem. They purified the Temple and re-instituted sacrifices. When the temple was re-opened, the festival lasted eight days and they lit oil lamps as a symbol that they understood their victory was due to Divine providence rather than their own military might. Thought they lacked sufficient oil for more than one day, the lamps burned for eight. Even today, Jews celebrate eight days of Hanukkah, and light eight lamps in remembrance of that miracle.

It is one of those happy coincidences of history that Hanukkah roughly coincides with Christmas almost every year. At a time Jews celebrate their deliverance from the Greeks, Christians celebrate the earthly arrival of the eternal deliverer, who came in the form of a Jewish baby born to a Jewish peasant couple in a hay barn in the Jewish town of Bethlehem.

Even Jesus' human parents would not have said their son was born in 1 AD, or, impossibly, 3 BC. It was a sixth-century Scythian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, who first persuaded the world to count time from Christ's birth. History does not record the exact date of Jesus' birth, though it has recorded Him as the central figure in all of human history, and His birth is worthy of celebration. For centuries, Christians have chosen to celebrate it on December 25. Given the uncertain nature of human calendars but the certainty of His birth, Dec. 25 is as good as any to reflect on and celebrate that awesome miracle - whatever year it is.