Happy New Year – when?

Tue, Jan 06, 2015

Editor: Millions of people are observing New Year’s Day without any knowledge of why or where it originated. While some people question its observation, of course, most people see nothing wrong with such a celebration. Have you ever reflected or examined why you believe and practise what you are doing?{{more}}

Our world is filled with many pagan customs and traditions. However, only a few people seek to recognize, investigate and reject such customs and traditions. The majority of people go along with these widespread practices without questioning. Some people hold the same beliefs they learned as children and assume that such beliefs are right. Why should one take his beliefs for granted and never take time to truly scrutinize or verify them? The observation of January 1st as New Year’s Day is one such custom and tradition.

Does your Bible explain the time for the New Year? In Exodus 12: 2, we read: “This month shall be to you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you.” Verse 18 also tells us “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty- first day of the same month.” Which month is this? Deuteronomy 16: 1 tells us “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover to Yahweh your Elohim; for in the month of Abib Yahweh your Elohim brought you forth out of Egypt by night.”

Every religious leader will agree that the Feast of Passover is observed in spring; the month when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and when the Messiah Yahshua was impaled, and that this time was certainly not in winter. This is the Feast they referred to as Easter. Since the first month of the year is when the Messiah Yahshua was impaled, why are you not observing this event in January, if this is the first month of the year? The month of Abib starts with the first new moon in spring. This is the time Yahweh established as New Year, not January 1st.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, “January 1 was restored as New Year’s Day by the Gregorian calendar (1582), immediately adopted by Roman Catholic countries.

Other countries slowly followed suit: Scotland, 1660; Germany and Denmark, about 1700; England, 1752; Sweden, 1753; and Russia, 1918.

“Our modern celebration of New Year’s Day stems from an ancient Roman custom, the feast of the Roman god Janus – god of doorways and beginnings. The name for the month of January also comes from Janus, who was depicted as having two faces. One face of Janus looked back into the past, and the other peered forward to the future.” (http://earthsky.org/earth/why-does-the-new-year-begin-on-january-1)

Why are people, especially religious leaders, continuing to observe and to teach others to keep the first of January as New Year’s Day? It is time for you to separate yourself from paganism. “Thus says Yahweh, Learn not the ways of the nations and be not dismayed at the signs of the heaven; for the nations are dismayed by them.” (Jeremiah 10:2). “Yahweh is not an Elohim of confusion, but of peace.”(1 Corinthians 14:33).

It is time for you to observe Yahweh’s New Year, not man’s New Year.

Sheldon Govia

Assemblies of Yahweh – Cedars

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