Father time is interesting to me; like ‘The Matrix’, time governs our lives. Many homes have a clock in every room of the house. Many of us wear miniature clocks on our wrist. Now we check the clocks on our phone. Alarms tell us when to get up, take medicine, go to meetings or doctor’s appointments. I even have an alarm that reminds when I should be getting to bed! Why do we need to have segments of time? Why do we need to divide time into years, and months, weeks, and days? Have you ever wondered why? And, why do we need that little red hand that ticks off the seconds?!?
Time is an arbitrary task master that forces us into a schedule. When it is not keeping us on task it is also governing our leisure time. Have you ever wondered why we need to mark points in time, such as birthdays and holidays? Why we have the concept of a holiday?
He made the moon for the seasons; the sun knows the place of its setting. Psalms 104:19
What I remember of the Ukrainian New Year began with the entire city lighting up their own fireworks for about twenty minutes. Just picture a grand finale on the fourth of July and project it over an entire city, and you’ll be fairly close. After the fireworks, things moved inside, and there was a lot of drinking and smoking cigarettes. I remember this very well because our apartment building was structured strangely so that our bedroom window was adjacent to the neighbors’ balcony. We could smell the cigarettes through our drafty windows and hear the very loud conversations of the neighbors. As the evening wore into the wee hours, the joyous festivities turned to fighting, and then settled into loud Television programming in Ukrainian, which reverberated through the concrete walls. Eventually, it died down about 4:00 in the morning. I also remember how completely dead it was in the morning. Even the numerous stray dogs seemed like they were tired from all the festivities.
While there we were introduced to the Slavic version of Santa Claus, named ‘Ded Moroz’ (Grandfather Frost), which I mentioned a few weeks ago. He is not really a Christmas figure, but more of a new year icon, similar to ‘Father Time’ He is taller and thinner than Santa and doesn’t need glasses like our Santa. He lives in Veliky Ustyug, a city in Northern Russia. He is apparently much more talented than our Santa, because he has no elves or reindeer. He only has 3 horses and his granddaughter, Snegurochka (Snow Maiden) to help him deliver all the gifts on the New Year. He is also far more logical than Santa, walking through the front door, rather than down the chimney, to place gifts under the New Year’s tree. He then etches a design with his magic staff in the frost on the window before leaving.
As far as I can remember, it doesn’t seem like the belief in Father Frost is quite as extravagant as ours is with Santa Claus. I don’t remember the banter with children, trying to encourage them to believe in Father Frost like we encourage children to believe in Santa here in the States. There were no holiday T.V. Specials or classic Father Frost movies where cute kids have to believe in father frost to save the new year. He does, however, maintain the naughty-nice list. Oh, and Ukrainians don’t eat candy out of a sock (weird!).
It may be that Father Frost has been influenced by his ‘Christian’ cousin. Originally, the pagan lore was much darker. Father Frost was called Morozko (Snow Demon). He kidnapped children and refused to return them until parents paid a ransom. As Santa’s image softened and began acquiring Christian similarities, he was eventually banned in the Soviet Union, only to be reinstated again when Stalin needed to manipulate public opinion more to his favor.
As the Slavik fairy tale goes, there was an evil stepmother, who hated her stepdaughter, and loved her own. She sent her husband off with the stepdaughter out to the forest to die. But her grandfather, Father Frost, found her, and she was kind to him. Father Frost returned her kindness with fine clothes, and brought her lots of treasures, so when the husband went out to retrieve what was supposed to be the dead girl’s body, the step mother was enraged when he brought the girl back, alive and apparently very wealthy. The selfish stepmother sent her own daughter out to the forest, hoping she would come back with jewels and dressed in finery as well. As fate would have it, the other girl was brought back dead, covered in cement, mud, and tar.
So, back to our question, God is a timeless so why did he create time?
He has placed eternity in their hearts – Ecclesiastes 3:11
This verse follows a section of verses, made popular by The Byrds in their 1966 song “Turn, Turn, Turn”.
Time is what reminds us of mortality. If we were immortal, why would we commemorate birthdays or anniversaries? If we had an infinity of time to accomplish things, what would the value of one or two major accomplishments be so that we would annually remember them? We can get caught up in the everyday mundane, but with the arrival of the new year, we often reflect on our achievements from the year, as well as the opportunities missed. What will we do with our future? 2022 has come and gone and 2023 arrives as a blank slate ready to be written on.
After the eggnog and cocoa has been drunk, the puzzles are finished, and the toys are forgotten; when the in-laws have gone, and the tree is on the side of the road take some time to celebrate the victories of the last year. Plan some new things. More importantly, reflect on your far distant future: the eternal destiny that every birthday and new year is there to remind you about.