Happy other New Year! We’ve already kicked off the liturgical new year, and now the calendar has caught up with us.
Yet it’s still the Christmas season with lots more to celebrate. So here are some Catholic ways of looking at this time of year.
The Germans call New Year’s Eve Silvesterabend or just Silvester. That’s because 31 December is the feast of Pope St Sylvester I.
English novelist Evelyn Waugh gives Sylvester a role in his novel Helena, about the emperor Constantine’s mother and her search for the true cross of Jesus in Jerusalem.
In the novel, the pope is so humble that he frustrates the rich and fashionable people of his era.
One of them sputters, “If he’s ever declared a saint they ought to commemorate him on the last day of the year.”
We know almost nothing factual about Sylvester. But we know a lot about what happened during his pontificate.
This included the beginning of the Council of Nicaea and the building of some very large churches in Rome, including St John Lateran.
Sylvester was also pope when the emperor Constantine finally converted to Christianity.
He oversaw one of the most momentous changes in church history – when it came out of the catacombs and became legally accepted in the Roman Empire.
We can argue about whether this was a good idea or not. Plenty of Catholics do.
We currently have one faction of online Catholics who would like us to go back to the catacombs and are prepping for this.
There’s another faction who think we should be ruling the world, and I think they’re prepping as well.
What Constantine’s conversion meant for Sylvester was that he now had a very powerful patron.
Unfortunately, this patron was also a potentially interfering one who was not well catechised and was used to being obeyed.
This could have gone very badly for the church. But it didn’t, so perhaps Pope Sylvester had a lot of wisdom and strength, and a lot of tact.
We’re also now in the thick of the twelve days of Christmas. In medieval England, this was the real party time.
Advent was like a mini-Lent, so once the Christmas season started, it continued all the way through to Epiphany on 6 January.
In towns and villages, local people would appoint a Lord of Misrule who would oversee public festivities and general whoop-de-doo in the dead of winter.
Having been in England in the dead of winter, I can assure you that any kind of whoop-de-doo in the snow and darkness is very welcome, especially when the shops are shut.
So if you’re still eating Christmas leftovers, don’t feel too bad. There’s a long tradition of continuing to feast after Christmas Day.
And why not leave the Christmas lights and decorations up a bit longer? It’s a good Catholic tradition to enjoy the full Christmas season.
I know some hard-core Catholics who leave them up till 2 February, which is the feast of the presentation of baby Jesus in the Temple. So really, it’s your call.
In the spirit of continuing the party, I notice that more Catholic parishes in Australia are also introducing the lovely custom of celebrating Mass on New Year’s Eve.
In some places, it’s a midnight Mass, so that you start the year bang on time with the solemnity of Mary Mother of God.
This is Mary’s greatest title – Theotokos, or God-bearer – and I can’t think of any reason not to put yourself and the whole year under her protection.
Mary was given this title at the Council of Ephesus, just a hundred years after Pope St Sylvester lived and died. He started the process by convening the Council of Nicaea.
This council – which ended in 325, and whose 1700th anniversary we’ve been celebrating this year – declared that Jesus was truly God and always had been.
He wasn’t created by God the Father. It’s why we say “begotten not made” in the creed on Sundays.
Without that clarification, Mary couldn’t have been named as Theotokos.
We live in an era where we know so much about each individual pope. We know his dietary preferences, high school nickname, and sporting team alliances.
We know little about Sylvester except that the Catholics of his time thought he had personal holiness in spades.
So this New Year’s Eve, do enjoy yourself – ask Pope St Sylvester to pray for us.
And thank God for his great work as pope, and give thanks to God for his wisdom, humility, and tact in a time of global crisis.