A Saturday Evening Post

According to the Gregorian calendar used in Modern times, the end of the solar year is Dec 31st. Prior to this, however, a Roman calendar was used, but they miscalculated the solar year by eleven minutes, which eventually resulted in Easter, traditionally observed on March 21 fell further away from the spring equinox with every passing year. Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582 implemented his calendar and set the year to begin on January 1^st.    When the new year should begin was a completely arbitrary decision on his part. He chose January 1st because it was the beginning of a Roman feast celebrating the Roman God Janus, the Roman God of doorways and beginnings. In many other countries, different calendars have been used, until fairly recently with the development of easier ways to get around the world, different countries and cultures have begun to recognize each other’s calendars. Many still observe their own holidays.

When I was a kid in Taiwan the Chinese New Year was on February 4^th. Because of the differences in the calendar, I felt I

held the secrets of the universe, I was the only one that knew the true end of the year was on December 31st.  The tradition I liked was that people always gave children red envelopes with money in them. So a few months after Christmas, I got lots of red envelopes.

There was always a lot of religious activity around the new year,  I remember the morning after, wading ankle-deep through the debris from firecrackers the night before. We always participated in the Taiwanese tradition of gluing red strips of paper written with messages of good luck and hope for the future over the doorway and on the sides of the door. It wasn’t till I was an adult that I became curious and decided to research this ancient tradition.

The legend passed down through generations stated that there was a terrible beast called the Nian that terrorized all the villagers. He came into the houses and ate the children. The villagers placed food in front of the house, in the hopes that the beast would eat the food, and be too full to eat the children. This was the reason for the firecrackers as well, They hoped to scare the beast away. One day a god visited one of the villagers and told him to kill a chicken and if he spread the blood over the doorposts and over the top of the door, the beast would see the blood and leave his family alone. As time passed, people began to use red paper, and they wrote messages on them, but the stories are still the same. 

Paraphrased from Exodus 12:1-14

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, in the land of Egypt, tell all the congregation of Israel that every man shall take a lamb, a male, a year old and kill their lambs at twilight, then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

I can’t be the only one seeing the similarities in these two stories, can I? Seven hundred years before Christ, The Assyrians took the Northern tribes of Isreal into captivity, these are known as the “Lost tribes of Isreal”. They never returned. I believe these tribes must have migrated further east into Pakistan and Afghanistan and, as the stories indicate as far as China. There are many other examples of Israelite influence on Chinese culture and in their written language. A lot of Chinese people have been brought to Christ when they see the Bible sown throughout their own traditions. 

Another tradition of the Chinese New year, is that they must thoroughly clean their houses to rid the resident of any lingering bad luck.

I’ll point you to the next verse in the same Chapter of Exodus

Exodus 12:17 Seven days, you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Isreal.

The term leaven was used to refer to the culture used in Jewish homes to make bread. Which was what they had to clean out of their homes, and start over after the festival building a new leaven.

While not evidence in and of itself, this certainly bolsters my faith that the scripture that we have is accurate when you can see the same stories passed down from generation to generation still resemble the record we have in the Bible.

1 Corinthians 5:7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump for Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. 

We don’t have to fear the Nian, coming into our homes, and eating our children, or the death angel, because Christ is our Passover Lamb. He is the pure and perfect sacrifice, covered in His blood, we are safe from death.

Happy New Year!