Holy Family feast

The Christmas wreath on our
main dining table

Today is the feast of the Holy Family and the last day of the Octave of Christmas. I had to celebrate the armenian Mass as the priest could not come from Jordan. Haven't practiced my armenian in quite a while so last night I had to go through some of the text and hymns, lest I make mistakes during the Mass.

It was quite a busy day as I had to do several errands before the year ended. Though there was no rain, the temperature fell so drastically it felt like zero degrees. The wind was strong, dry and cutting cold. Even 3 layers of clothes with a down-jacket is not enough to keep warm. But that did not stop people from going out to the city centre to celebrate the New Year.

Full moon on the
last night of the year

Well in Israel the Western New Year is not celebrated ... in fact neither does the Church. It's a civil celebration and originally was a feats for the pagan god Janus who has two faces ... one looking into the past and the peter into the future. To eliminate this pagan feast, the Church instituted the Solemnity of the Mother of God "Theotokos". The Christian New Year is the start of Advent. However there are still christians who have no profound understanding of it and still celebrate the "countdown" with midnight Mass. Utterly ridiculous and pagan. Event eh jews try to avoid this pagan feast of Janus but declaring Dec. 31st to be Sylvester Day ... named after Pope St. Sylvester whose feast day is on Dec. 31st. For the jews it's better to take a christian than a pagan roman significance of the day.

Well as the year ended, a series of unsettling events had rolled through. One of them was an open letter by 63 jewish high school students who declared they will not serve military service because of it's unethical occupation of Palestinian lands. In a quick reply hundreds of jewish students wrote a counter-letter declaring they will fight in the army and those who reject doing military service are traitors to the State and should lose their citizenship.  https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5063806,00.html

One newspaper has carried an article of the "last christian" in a Palestinian village where muslims have moved in. A bit dramatic because though the number of christians have fallen, it's not like we're down to one last person.  https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/1.830920