A different kind of New Year
Happy New Year’s Eve Eve!
No, that’s not typo. And yes, I know what day it is!
Dec. 1, this coming Sunday, is the first day of Advent, which marks the start of a new year on the church calendar. This cycle of seasons (Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, and Ordinary Time) is an invitation to walk slowly together through the story of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and what God has done and is doing to redeem his fractured world. It is a means by which the Church leverages God’s gift of chronological time—our linear hours, weeks, and years—to enter more fully into events that endure outside of time.
While the world celebrates the turning of the year at the end of December, the Church in full-on feast mode, receiving the good news of the birth of Jesus, God incarnate, divinity in limited human flesh with a celebration that doesn’t end until the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6.
I have tried in years past to drink from the deep well of the joy of 12 days of Christmastide while also sipping a “New Year, New You” spritzer of reflecting on the past year and setting personal goals for the year to come before Jan. 1, but I have discovered that my heart and mind simply cannot participate in two liturgies at once.
To be clear, I find reflection an essential part of my life in Christ, and I’m about as goal-oriented as person as you will find, but trying to do so while merrily feasting just made both feel entirely disjointed.
In recent years, I have taken to reflecting on the past year as a part of my Advent-Eve practice (I consider personal goals during a Epiphany for a variety of reasons which I might share in a few months if that’s something you’re interested in hearing about).
Here are the questions I ask myself in these waning days of the Church Year:
Since the first day of Advent last year, in what ways have I witnessed Jesus joining my story to his? Suffering and loss, green shoots of resurrection, abiding in the love of the Father, impossible things becoming reality, loving those I’ve been given to love, navigating deep hurt and disappointment—all of this has a home in the heart and story of Jesus. I reflect on my story in light of we’ve just walked through in the church calendar.
What is my honest hope for this Advent season? (A thank you to Tsh Oxenrieder for this question) I don’t set goals for the entire church year beyond. I just talk to God about how I hope he will meet me in these coming weeks.
Taking time to reflect at the birth of this other kind of new year has been better for my soul because it actually comes with Good News: All of life is a gift and a means of grace from God, and I can trust the hidden, slow work of God in my heart, in his Church, and in our world.
Our cultural pressure toward to Greatness in all areas of life does not need to factor into this new year preparation at all (and so the good news continues). In fact, Advent is the fitting time to acknowledge the longings that remain, even after our misguided pursuit of the Best Version of Ourselves. We can looking unflinchingly at all that feels mismatched, tangled up, and irreparably broken. During these weeks of Advent, we can help each other be of good courage as we, together, open ourselves up to the “bright sadness” of living in the Already-but-Not-Yet, or as Father John Breck describes it, “a sadness leavened by a deep joy,” a “longing for the glory and peace to come.” In place of the brittle comfort of “New Year, New You,” we can join our voices to the refrain stretching across generations, “Come, Lord Jesus, and make all things New.”
A Joyous and Blessed New Year to you, friends.