The Feast of Holy Name: How Do You Celebrate New Year's Coming?

What do you do to celebrate New Year’s Coming? Do you stay up to watch the ball drop? Do you quietly make some resolutions for the impending year? Do you watch some football games? How about cooking up some black eyed peas and turnip greens? What ritual brings in the New Year for you?

Every year we celebrate Holy Name on New Year’s Day and we celebrate the circumcision and naming of Jesus in the Temple. Talk about a different type of New Year’s ritual! On the eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life, he would have been taken to a rabbi to take part in this ceremony, so that he would have been marked as one of God’s Chosen People. While this simple rite comes at the end of today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, what tends to overshadow this ritual is the visitation of the angels to the shepherds and recalling Jesus’ virgin birth from Mary.

Often at this time of year we are bombarded by the miraculous! Angels visiting Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Shepherds, a virgin giving birth to Emmanuel (God is with us), and the magi coming from far away to bestow gifts on this new born king makes overlooking this Jewish rite very easy. This makes me think of how I tend to overlook the commonplace, everyday presence of God, as I seek out some amazing bolt-of-lightning type moment.

When Jesus came to earth we hear of all the miracles that took place for him to arrive. The Incarnation of Christ, the Truth that God would want to dwell within the Creation He made, is in and of itself astounding. Yet, on this day, the Feast of Holy Name what stands out to me is the simplicity and the quiet action of Joseph and Mary taking Jesus to be circumcised and named in the presence of the religious authority of the day. While it comes off as everyday, this rite helps me to know that God With Us was just like us.

We do not have too much about Jesus growing up. There is one story in Luke’s Gospel of Jesus’ trip to the Temple as a child, yet for the most part we are left to imagine what the Son of God was like as a kid, a teenager, and a young adult. Jesus walked around just like you and me. He scraped his knee and ran to Mary for comfort. He played with other children in the neighborhood. He stood beside Joseph watching as the carpenter went about his work.

Certainly, I love to celebrate the magnificence of God coming to dwell with us, the angel’s visitations, and the magi coming. Still what the Feast of Holy Name reminds me of is that God came down and was a little boy of whom Mary and Joseph took care. He was presented in the fashion of his culture. He became just like us and when he did he made our simple rituals and everyday practices holy. Maybe it seems silly to celebrate New Year’s traditions, but even actions as simple as these are made holy by Christ’s coming to be with us.