Happy New Year, Christians

New Year’s Day comes before Christmas in the Christian religion. For those of you not of our tradition, let me explain; for those of you who are of our tradition and never knew this, I’ll bring you up to speed, as well. It’s all very simple and goes along with all other religions that I could find.

We do ours on the First Sunday of Advent, pretty generally around the end of November. Four weeks of waiting (the meaning of Advent), which ends up with, religiously, the birth of Jesus Christ and, secularly, someone coming down the chimney with a pack on his back and reindeer pooping on your roof.

The Jewish people had their new year about three months ago, followed quickly by their days of repentance. Kick it up, repent fast. Our days of repentance come much later, maybe in February, March or April; since the Christian new year isn’t party time, we can tie our repentance days onto the secular New Year, I guess.

I think the Mayan new year starts on December 22, 2012. They have this long-term calendar which happens to be scaring the daylights out of everyone. It ends 12/21/12, but that’s just New Year’s Eve for them, same as 12/31 is for us. But if you believe it’s the end of days, send me your cash for safekeeping, because I’m skeptical.

So on this Christian New Year’s, toast it in with a glass of altar wine and wait for the civil New Year’s when you can have something more effective.