Newsletter Pastor’s Corner—March, A.D. 2012

For the ancient Romans with their Mediterranean climate, March was the first month of Spring, when armies would assemble for campaign: hence, they named the month after Mars (or Ares), the pagan god of war.  As the Light of Christ converted Rome and barbarian Europe, March became rededicated to St. Joseph, the guardian and foster-father of Jesus.  Under the Old Julian Calendar—organized, appropriately, by Julius Caesar, who famously suffered assassination on the Ides of March—March also stood as the first month of the year, which, quite frankly, seems to make a lot more sense than celebrating New Year’s in the middle of winter.

For Christians, the most important holiday to fall consistently in the month of March is Lady Day, or the Annunciation, on March 25th.  This is the date on which the Church commemorates the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she would bear the Son of God, Savior of the world.  (Notice that nine months after March 25th falls Christmas Day.)  The Early Church inherited from Judaism a belief that particularly holy people died on the anniversaries of their conceptions, so March 25th also marks the date of Christ’s death.

Jewish tradition furthermore held that this was the date upon which the patriarch Abraham, spiritual father to us all, took his son Isaac up a mountain as a sacrifice to God, only to have God announce forever and always that human sacrifice, and especially child sacrifice, is forbidden as an abomination before the Lord.  Such an association made perfect sense to the Church, given that Christians view the non-sacrifice of Abraham’s only son by Sarah as a precursor to the sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son.  And on top of all this, some claimed that March 25th was the date on which God created the world!

So, for those keeping score, Lady Day commemorates, at the very least, the conception of Jesus Christ, and for some includes the first day of Creation, the “sacrifice” of Isaac, and the first Good Friday.  So important a date was March 25th on the Christian calendar that, when Easter and the Annunciation both fell on the same day during the Middle Ages, they cancelled Easter.

In A.D. 1582, the Pope Gregory XIII gave the Old Julian Calendar a much-needed overhaul, creating what we know (as use) today as the Gregorian Calendar.  Amongst other things, this new calendar fixed New Year’s Day on January 1st (the Circumcision and Name of Jesus) in accordance with an old Roman custom.  The British Empire, not about to follow a Catholic innovation, stubbornly held on to celebrating New Year’s Day on March 25th right up until A.D. 1752, when England and her American colonies finally yielded to the modern calendar.  At this point only the yokels up in the hills kept whooping it up for a week-long New Year’s party that stretched from March 25th until April 1st.  Such uneducated throwbacks were thus derided as the stubborn April Fools.