The start of a new year has always stirred man to seek a sort of rebirth: a moment to reorder himself, to start afresh, to reset his identity, to stop his former errant course, and to strike out on the path of a truly meaningful life.

Those who know and love God have the clear advantage here. The Church, whom Christ formed by His own blood and divine love, established the celebration of the Birth of the Redeemer right next to the start of the calendar year. Further, the start of the calendar year was thus positioned shortly after the start of the Church’s liturgical year, in which she aligns her focus with the timeline of the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, followed by Pentecost and the initial spread and growth of the Church. These historical and supernatural events, brought forth by the action of the Most Blessed Trinity, are the perpetual memorials established by the Church, in solemn recurrence, so that they might captivate the minds of her children, and so that these might more easily make progress toward salvation and sanctification.

The start of the new year is on the final day of the Octave of Christmas. This is typically overlooked by those who tend more toward aligning themselves with the memorial observations of the secular world. For them, Christmas is long-gone by the start of the new year. For them, Christmas was fading in their hearts the moment it dawned upon the world on Christmas Day. For them, the joy of Christmas was, essentially, stolen while still ripening on the Vine, when Christ was still calling the world to prepare His manger, and when the Holy Family was inviting all to follow them on the rough road to Bethlehem. Thus, for most, a key grace – by which their “new year’s resolutions” could be given the depth and the vitality which they themselves, alone, cannot provide – is about to be missed.

On the Octave Day of Christmas, the first day of the new calendar year, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Circumcision of the Christ Child. It was on this day that Our Redeemer (who had entered this world with the purpose of suffering and redeeming us, and who had begun this redemptive suffering the first moment he took flesh in the womb of the Holy Virgin) first shed His blood for our redemption. These few drops of the Precious Blood, not nearly as copious as those to be shed in a few months on Good Friday, were sufficient to redeem a thousand worlds, if that were to have been needed. The Christ Child, on this first day of the new year, through the arrangement of observations prepared by His One and Holy Church, offers to all those who seek to be “reborn” the necessary grace to do so. All who write down their “new year’s resolutions,” should offer this paper to the Christ Child that He might seal it with His own Blood, and vouchsafe to bring these good and holy desires to fruition.

The Son of God did not descend from Heaven to be honored for a day – but for every day of the year. He left the glory of Heaven to embrace a real human life, and to suffer every day of it in order to ransom us back from the dominion of sin and death, to enlighten us as to His immense love for man, a love which drove Him to such a excessive display of His affection for us. The joy of Christmas must not be stolen before it is ripe, nor placed into an ill-prepared heart, one which cannot foster it nor see to its protection and growth; the joy of Christmas must be obtained from the Christ Child Himself, who freely extends it to those who come to see Him, poor and cold in the dark winter midnight of Bethlehem.

For those who do so, who place their hopes in Jesus Christ and in His great love, mercy, and affection for man, the Octave Day of Christmas, the day of His first sacrifice for our redemption, the first day of the new year, will be a day of true and spiritual joy, in which they will know that their great desire to “be made new” is not only possible in Christ, but is completely eclipsed by that very same desire which burns in the heart of the Redeemer. 

Holding the infant Hand of the Christ Child, proceed with confidence into the new year, asking Jesus Christ, with true faith, to fulfill your good and holy resolutions, and it will be done for you. For it is that same Christ Child who, as a man, proclaimed with the same tender affection: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Therefore, let us ask this One, and our good and holy resolutions will be fulfilled.

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Merry Christmas!