The cheap wristwatches that I buy do one thing: measure time. A lot of people think that calendars are similar. We are all aware that one of the functions of a calendar is to divide time neatly into units of years, months, weeks and days, and many of us think that this is all that calendars do. This is shortsighted. The truth is that every calendar performs a secondary, more significant function. They tell us who we are.
This may sound strange, but it’s true. Every calendar identifies its adherent in at least three ways. First, part of how we participate in a society is by sharing a calendar. I am an American. One of the ways I am regularly reminded of this fact is that November never passes for me without a hankering for a plate full of turkey and a dish of sweet-potatoes that (believe it or not) have marshmallows on top. (It’s weird; I know.) Celebrating Thanksgiving is part of how I remember that I’m American. The day is an annual reminder of who I am.
Second, a calendar always reveals what a given society values. I think it was Luther who first noted that people worship what they always make time for. This is true not just on the level of individuals, but of societies. A quick glance at the annual holidays on a British calendar will show the degree to which our society worships money (bank holidays), intimacy (Valentines, anniversaries), family (Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, birthdays), and consumption (the real agenda behind much of Halloween, Christmas, and so-called Black Friday). One of the myths of modern society is that the public square is areligious. This is not the case. The society we inhabit is always training us to worship. One of the most effective techniques for doing so is a common calendar.
Third, a calendar reminds a society of the past events that it has an ethical duty to remember. Remembrance Sunday is the obvious example here. We all feel a moral obligation to use a day to honour the past. This impulse is deeply human. It is yet another way that calendars answer the question, “Who am I?”.
The Wisdom of Israel’s Calendar
It’s interesting that under the Old Covenant God gave Israel a calendar that would do just what has been outlined above: reinforce a unique identity. We lose sight of the degree to which Israel’s calendar was distinct from the peoples around her. Take, for example, Israel’s seven day week. No one around Israel followed such a pattern. Being a Jew in Rome living by a seven-day week was just as odd as a Scot attempting to live by a 10-day week. Israel’s time was as distinct as her food-laws.
Second, Israel’s calendar was a constant reminder of her distinct values. All of her holidays were focused around the significance of her covenant with Yahweh. What this taught the ordinary Israelite was that God – and the giving of time to worship God – was more important than anything else, including work and leisure.
Third, the calendar of Israel was dependent upon the covenant history of Israel. Early on in Israel’s religious development, Passover became identified with the Exodus, Pentecost with the giving of the Law at Sinai, and Tabernacles with the wilderness journey. In this way the religious calendar of Israel was an annual reminder of those sacred memories that God’s people had an ethical duty to remember.
Now, every once in a while, you bump into a Christian who says that believers should not celebrate special days like Christmas and Easter. Typically, they argue that the Lord’s Day (i.e. Sunday) is sufficient to provide a distinctive, Christian calendar. My own opinion is that this perspective is naïve. Although the Lord’s Day does indeed provide us with (a) a calendar that sets us apart from other peoples; (b) one that reinforces the primacy of worship in our scale of values; and (c) a weekly reminder of gospel history, still there is another side from which to view things. Personally, I’m bothered by the fact that, when Christians limit their religious calendar to the Lord’s Day, inevitably they end up being more secular than they realise. It’s not that they stop honouring additional special days. It’s just that the world begins to dictate which days they honour. Their calendar, in other words, does not become areligious; it just becomes secular. The world decides which values to celebrate, not the church. And – felt or unfelt – this almost always marks a slow shift in the identity and worship of those people who accept the calendar given to them.
The Blessing of Using the Gospel to Mark Time
One of the benefits of a Christian calendar – and by this I mean a calendar that transposes time into a celebration of Christ – is that it is a wonderful tool for sanctifying the imagination of God’s people. This happens first as Christians learn to reinterpret the whole of Israel’s history according to the person and work of Jesus. But it continues as Christians learn to read the annual rhythms of nature as reminders of unchanging, spiritual truth.
What do I mean by this? Think about Christmas. How wonderful that we celebrate the birth of Christ at the hinge of the year when growing darkness turns to growing light. Think of the deep symbolism of this. How black was the night prior to the advent of Jesus? How frigid were the hearts of men? And yet God spoke light into the darkness and warmth into the cold by sending His Son as our saviour. No wonder our forefathers chose to mark the birth of Christ just after the winter solstice. Here the calendar is using nature to reiterate gospel truth. The very timing of Christmas reminds us that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4). Once Christ is born into the world, a new process has begun that will not cease until the glory of the Son of Righteousness towers like the summer sun enlivening the whole of creation.
By Joe Barnard
