New Year's Resolutions

I have always found it difficult to decide between my two favourite seasons: autumn or spring? Spring is fresh, green and luscious, spotted with fresh snowdrops, bluebells and crocuses emerging from their wintery hibernation; spring lambs and baby deer leap as if in an ecstasy of gaiety through the fields and meadows, and bunnies play among the infant flower beds. And, my particular favourite, the first day of the season when you walk out of the house, and your cheeks are caressed by the gentle warmth of the springtime sun. Autumn, on the other hand, sees beautiful colours perforating the dark green of the aged foliage, crunchy leaves under foot, turbulent and tumultuous weather up above while humming a few satisfying strains of Donner und Blitzen to oneself through the fields and copses. The satisfaction of whipping out one’s knitted scarves, gloves and hats, and tucking under warm blankets with a mug of hot chocolate, as the stifling heat of the summer slowly starts to drift away, and the year’s accumulated cobwebs are blown into the aether by the frosty north wind.

Can you now see how difficult my dilemma is? My inability to make decisions is borne entirely, I’m sure, from seeing the hidden joy of every conceivable option! Why make a cake, if you are not going to eat it, I say. I was once told that when the leaves fall off the trees in the autumn, it is because a new bud is pushing them out. It is a very cute and pretty image which is, of course, complete liberal twaddle. Leaves are, in fact, cut off by the parent branch, to prevent the corruption of the greater body. The Lord, in his wisdom, provided the spring to remind man of renewal, regeneration and resurrection, the autumn, to remind him to keep his body from rotting his soul.

The brain cell in my head responsible for piety also draws my attention to spring, because it hosts one of my favourite liturgical feasts (Easter notwithstanding, naturally), the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which, you may have noticed, determines a considerable amount of my occasional pious devotions. In England, such was the love between my two non-biological mothers, the Annunciation on 25th March was always kept as the start of the new year. Why? Believing, of course, that life begins at conception, it was the moment of the Incarnation of the Word of God. Nine months before he became visible to the world, Our Blessed Lord was known to the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph, and those around them. Incidentally, tradition has it that Christ ascended the Skull of Adam on that first Good Friday: the first day in the Holy Sepulchre, the Womb of God’s Redemptive Act. These pious traditions are more than just mediaeval flights of fancy, don’t you know.

Anyway, when England stripped itself of the Truth, exposing itself to the debauchery of Sodom and the lies of Gomorrah, the popular new year ceased to evoke any Marian devotion, so ashamed was the child to look towards its mother, and was moved to the start of January instead (to the month named after the two-faced god of portals, funnily enough; a Satanic turnaround, if ever there was one). Much of the practice of government and the economy, however, did not change, as is normal in our country. When the Parliament of Great Britain, as it was called then, replaced the Julian with the Gregorian calendar in 1756, the year lost eleven days to catch up, and so the start of the government year, and the year kept in the City of London, was parachuted to the end of the first week in April. This is why, of course, the financial year begins in April, unlike the rest of the world, which begins in January.

It is now the two-thousand and eleventh year since the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord, and so, it must be time to have made new year’s resolutions, and possibly, be breaking them already. Whatever should I resolve to do this year? To get to my point in fewer than 5 paragraphs, perhaps? To be less sporadic in my blogging?

I remember once, my young, blonde French teacher at school, who was an ‘evangelical’ Christian, once demonstrated the power of God’s forgiveness by tearing out the first page of a new book. It’s not just something which is done at baptism, or at the start of a year, but every day, in God’s eyes, to those who truly desire it. I’ve always been profoundly moved, that the only time the Gospel was obviously and fruitfully preached in a classroom, was by a protestant heretic.

So, what am I going to write on that fresh new page in my exercise book of life?

I’m going to start by writing my name.