Theologian's Almanac for Week of December 13, 2020
Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking - specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.
For the week of Sunday, December 13:
This week continues the festival of Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish celebration commemorating the second-century-BCE rededication of the Jerusalem Temple (“Hanukkah” means “dedication”) by the Maccabees, a small group of Jewish fighters who held out against the much larger Syrian army, who previously had invaded and captured the holy site. The story goes that there was only enough oil to light the temple’s menorah for one night — but the oil miraculously lasted for eight.
December 14 is the feast day of St. Lucy, martyred in Syracuse is 304. She is said to have defiantly proclaimed her Christianity and given away all her possessions; her captors tore out her eyes, but they were miraculously restored, the story goes. She’s often depicted in paintings bearing her eyes on a plate; she is the patron saint of the blind. Because her name is related to the Latin word for “light” (lux), and because the solstice comes soon after her feast day, in Sweden she is the patron saint of harvest and of light.
December 14 is the feast day of St. John of the Cross, founder with Teresa of Ávila, of the Discalced Carmelites, and a renowned mystical writer, born in Spain in 1542. He grew up in an impoverished family, and in his youth worked at a hospital for the destitute in order to contribute to his household’s income. Eventually, mentored by St. Teresa of Ávila, he sought to reform the Carmelite order — and was arrested and publicly punished for his efforts. He wrote poetry in prison, however, and today is widely considered one of Spain’s greatest poets; among his most famous works are “Spiritual Canticle” and “Dark Night of the Soul.” The patron saint of mystics, contemplatives, and Spanish poets, St. John wrote, “They can be like the sun, words. / They can do for the heart what light can for a field.”
December 15 is the day in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was ratified by the new United States of America. It’s no accident that the first freedom named in the Bill of Rights is the freedom of religion; nor are the freedoms mentioned in the first amendment — religion, speech, press, assembly, petition — a random hodgepodge. They form a kind of choreography of liberty: at the foundation is freedom of religion (that is, freedom of “thought” or “conviction” about the deepest questions human beings can ask); then comes the freedom to speak freely about one’s thoughts and convictions; then comes the right to spread that speech far and wide, through a free press; then comes the right to assemble and organize with others who share convictions; and finally comes the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances on the basis of those convictions. And it’s all grounded in the freedom of religion, broadly defined — what Jefferson called freedom of “mind” in his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a document which strongly influenced James Madison as he wrote the First Amendment.
December 18 is the birthday of Methodist hymn writer Charles Wesley, born in Epworth, England, in 1707. While his brother, John, became an accomplished preacher, Charles was a hymn-writer and song leader. The two attended Oxford, where their classmates teased them for being so serious and methodical about their religious life; they dubbed the pair, “Methodists,” a name the brothers adopted. They traveled around England on horseback, preaching and leading singing out in the open air to tens of thousands. Hymnals were expensive, and many couldn’t read anyway, so Charles wrote accessible, memorable lyrics that could be sung by a leader and then echoed by the congregation. He wrote nearly 9,000 hymns over his lifetime, which averages to about 10 lines of poetry every day for more than 50 years, including “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”
December 19 is the day in 1843 that Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, the heartwarming and harrowing story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner” who learns the Christmas spirit of generosity from three ghosts who show him Christmases past, present, and future. In the mid-nineteenth century, Christmas was not yet the cultural and commercial juggernaut it is today (bah, humbug!). A Christmas Carol became wildly popular in both England and the United States, and helped contribute to both the tone and prominence of Christmas as a time of feasting, gift-giving, and merriment.