The Colonel begs permission to interrupt your holiday festivities (Merry Christmas, by the way) with this important announcement:
December 31, 2019 is not (the Colonel says again, NOT) "the last day of the decade."
The Colonel knows this comes as quite a shock to many of you recovering from other shocks received lately.
Some of you were shocked to find that, despite the fulfillment of your congressperson's pre-inaugural impeachment promise, Donald Trump is still ensconced in the Oval Office. Understanding just a little bit of our Constitution would have insulated you from that voltage.
Some of you were shocked to see that a college football team, from another state, to which you rabidly claim allegiance -- even though you've never been within 50 miles of the campus, wear a Walmart-bought affinity T-shirt, and proclaim "We whupped y'all!" after every win -- didn't make the play-offs this year. Don't worry, Bama Bandwagon Boors, there's still a few LSU T-shirts left at your local Wally World -- Chinese sweatshops are crankin' 'em out faster than you can ask, "Siri, where is Baton Rouge?"
Some of you (like the Colonel his own self) were shocked to see that Ole Miss, whose administration has been so active in the erasure of any name, monument, or tradition that even remotely infringes on the tender feelings of whiny social justice warriors and tyrannical political correctness priests, would, after dismissing one coach for "indiscretions" and his successor for "failure," hire a new coach for whom those characterizations are career hallmarks.
The Colonel will admit that he is responsible for his own exposure to the voltage in this case -- he started to care about Ole Miss again. Bad habits are the hardest to break.
Some of you were shocked (as was the Colonel) to hear that the new "sixth" branch of the military services -- the Space Force -- would fall under the Department of the Air Force. Hello?!? Anybody whose ever watched an episode of Star Trek knows that Space belongs to the Navy.
Plus, the Department of the Navy already has experience with managing rouge elements it knows absolutely nothing about.
Looking at you, fellow jarheads.
Fear not, gentle readers, the Colonel is getting to the point of this prattle.
In introduction of that point, a history lesson.
The year was 1999. As that year drew to a close, breathless (and brainless) commentators, prognosticators, and charlatans began an ever-increasing drum beat of retrospection and prediction regarding the impending end of the millennium. There was just one little problem.
They were a whole year early.
The second millennium -- the second set of one thousand years, as established and counted by Christian societies (and a Roman emperor) -- actually ended on the 31st of December in the year of our Lord 2000. January 1, 2001 was the first day of the new millennium.
Shocking!
Here's even more shocking news: Each decade ends in a year with the numeral 0 (not 9) at the end.
The Colonel knows that some of you are skeptical of his claim. So, try this. Take out ten one dollar bills from your wallet and place them on a clean, flat surface proximal to the reach of your arms. Grasp the stack of bills in one hand and count them out as if you were paying yourself one dollar for each year you lived this decade. One dollar for 2011, one more for 2012, and so on. When you get to 2019, how many one dollar bills will you have counted out?
C'mon, this is easy math -- even for the Colonel. Doesn't even require taking off your shoes.
The answer is: NINE.
"But, but..., Colonel," you argue, "you started the decade at 2011. That's a trick!"
Yes, yes he did. And, no it's not a trick, because the first year of the present decade was 2011.
Okay, the Colonel knows this is hard to take at face value. So, let's try this experiment with the same parameters, but in a different setting.
Let's imagine that we are shepherds working on the outskirts of a wide spot in the road south of Jerusalem, called Bethlehem. We had a life-changing experience ten years ago, and we have accounted for the passing of the years since by numbering them as each began. For example, one shepherd says to the next, "We are in the first year AA (after angels)". We are at the beginning of the tenth year since that startling night. What year is it?
For the LSU and Bama grads struggling with this, there's a not-so subtle clue in the eighth word of the second to last sentence above.
For the rest of you, congratulations for saying the correct answer, "Ten" out loud and startling those around you (even though your shame if caught reading the Colonel's drivel probably means you're sitting somewhere alone).
Now let's assume that we shepherds only get paid at the end of each decade. The not-so bright shepherd (you know, the one wearing the "Feel the Bern" tunic) announces at sundown of 31 December 09, "See y'all (well..., he is from south of Jerusalem) later. I'm headed to town to collect my wages." He shows back up at camp at sunrise on 1 January 10 after having made a trip to town to see the boss and complains bitterly to the rest of the lads (and lassies) that "I worked the whole decade of the 00's for that scrooge and he only paid me for nine years!"
So, what do the rest of us do? Does the old retired centurion stand up and bellow, "Follow me boys (and girls)! We're on strike! Let the boss tend his own stinkin' sheep!"
Or, do we shake our heads at the utter stupidity of the members of the DSJ (Democratic Socialists of Judea) and go back to poking sticks in the fire?
See, there is no year 0 in our modern calendar. It begins as 1 A.D. (or C.E.). So, in the first decade A.D., only 9 years had elapsed at the end of 9 A.D. In the first century A.D., only 99 years had elapsed at the end of 99 A.D. In the first millennia A.D., only 999 years had elapsed at the end of 999 A.D. In the second millennia A.D., only 1999 years had elapsed at the end of the year 1999.
So, the current millennium did not begin on 1 January 2000. It actually began on 1 January 2001. And, the current decade did not begin on 1 January 2010, but 1 January 2011, and will not end until midnight on 31 December2020 / 1January 2021.
Here's where the Colonel has to admit that what he just told you may not be 100% true.
For about 1600 years the western world marked the passing of days and years using a calendar commissioned by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. This Julian Calendar began each new year on 1 January, but during the medieval period western Europe, Britain in particular, began to begin each year in the middle of March (for various reasons associated with either solar cycles or religious holiday associations). The Julian Calendar did account for the scientific fact that the earth revolves around the sun every 365 and almost a quarter days (365.24 to be more exact), by adding an extra day to February every four years.
The problem with this quick fix was that over centuries that .01 day (roughly 11 minutes) error added extra days to the actual count of days elapsed. By the middle of the 16th Century A.D., that .01 day error had badly un-synced the human calendar and actual solar calendar. A calendar commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII (no relation to the Colonel) in 1582, attempted to correct the flaw in the Julian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar included a more accurate calculation that added an extra day to February in years divisible by four...
...unless the year is also divisible by 100.
The Colonel ain't makin' this up, and it gets even more complicated.
If the leap year is divisible by 100, but also divisible by 400, the leap day is added anyway.
Makes the Colonel want to watch "Catch 22" and "Monty Pithon's the Holy Grail" again. For the umpteenth time each...
Viewed as a nefarious "Papist Plot" in many quarters, the Gregorian Calendar was not uniformly adopted across the western world. By the time Britain (and her far flung colonies) got around to adopting the Gregorian Calendar (nearly two centuries after its introduction), the British Empire's calendar was out of sync with the rest of the western world by nearly two whole weeks.
An act of Parliament adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the British had to jump from 2 September to 14 September to adjust to it.
The Colonel kids thee not.
While lots of British subjects were unhappy with the loss of those 11 days for a variety of reasons that you can well imagine, Ben Franklin is reported to have remarked favorably about the idea of going to bed on the night of the 2nd of September and not having to get out of bed until the morning of the 14th.
The Colonel kinda knows the feeling -- when he hit the rack last night he was 22. When he woke up this morning, the Colonel was four weeks shy of his 64th birthday.
And, if you think that the calendar we are using today (it's the Gregorian Calendar, by the way) is keeping perfectly modern track of time..., well..., you're wrong. The eggheads that make their living studying the numbers tell us that, if we keep the Gregorian Calendar until then, by the year 4909 (in which the Colonel might not be still be pestering you with his posts) a twenty-six second error per year will result in the Gregorian Calendar being one full day ahead of the solar calendar.
Anyway..., the Colonel's bottom line, regardless whether we've kept track of the actual count of days elapsed since the inception of the Julian Calendar (and it's minor Gregorian modification), is that all of you breathlessly celebrating that "last" this and that "of the decade" are a year early.
The Colonel thinks he'll settle the matter in his own life by burning all the calendars within reach of his frost-nipped and tendinitis-ravaged finger tips.
Oh, and a year-long nap might be in order, as well.
See you next decade!
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Why the Shepherds?
You've read and heard Luke's account of the birth of Jesus countless times, the Colonel is sure. The Roman emperor, Octavian -- or, as he called himself, Caesar Augustus -- wanted to know how many folks made up his empire, and commissioned a census. It was billed as a matter of determining the tax base, but the Colonel suspects, from what he knows about Octavian, that it was just as much a matter of Octavian's egotistical desire to know the extent of his dominion over humanity.
At any rate, Luke tells us that in order to be counted, citizens of the empire had to return to their cities of birth. So, this man named Joseph, whose wife Mary was expecting to give birth at any moment, took his new bride back to his ancestral home.
Bethlehem.
The city of David.
Bell and Gore hadn't invented the telephone and internet, yet, so Joseph had no way of making reservations for a place to stay in Bethlehem. When they arrived after traveling nearly 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, they found the tiny village so packed with folks who had, like Joseph, left the farm to work in the big city, that there was only room to sleep in a stable.
Now, English translations of the original Greek in which Luke's account was written use the phrase "because there was no room in the inn." From what the Colonel has studied about the size of Bethlehem two thousand years ago, he is apt to believe that there was no inn at all. It's possible that the home of Joseph's family in Bethlehem had no private room in which Mary could give birth.
Anyway, Mary gave birth to Jesus in a livestock shelter and used a feed trough for a cradle. Pretty humble for the King of the Universe.
The Colonel believes that we have these very intimate details of Jesus' birth because when Luke began writing his Gospel and the Book of Acts for his patron, Theophilus, he interviewed Mary. The events of Jesus' birth were so dramatic and wondrous that Luke tells us that "Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." (Luke 2: 19)
As memorable as giving birth in a stable was for Mary, an even more memorable occurrence was the visit shortly thereafter from a bunch of shepherds, and the story they told her.
Can you imagine the incredulity of Joseph and Mary when these shepherds told them their story?
Luke tells us that the night of Jesus' birth, these shepherds were keeping watch over their flock in the fields outside of Bethlehem. (Luke 2:8)
Now, humor the Colonel and put yourself in the place of these shepherds.
It's dark.
Pre-Edison dark.
Dark enough that the brightest light you can see is the Milky Way splashed across the sky overhead.
It's so quiet that you can hear your hair grow.
You're sleepy, but your job is to stay alert and keep your flock safe from predators and thieves.
Your senses are heightened in the dark and quiet -- eyes dilated to take in as much ambient light as possible and ears attuned to the slightest rustle from the sleeping sheep, or the footfall of a predator.
Now just maybe you can understand the abject terror the shepherds felt at what happened next. Luke tells us -- and the Colonel believes that Mary told him what the shepherds told her -- that an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to the shepherds and "...the glory of the Lord shone around them." (Luke 2:9)
Imagine going from hidden in pitch black dark to spotlighted by the brightest light you have ever seen. And, oh, by the way there's an angel in front of you.
Not a winged, chubby baby. Angels don't look like that.
The angel in front of you is a fierce, inhuman creature, unlike anything you have ever seen before.
That the shepherds didn't scream and scatter like a bunch of adolescent girls at a haunted house shows just how terrified they were.
Don't know about you, but as much as the Colonel's flight or fight reflex has a trained bias toward the latter, he's not sure he wouldn't have been leading the choir of adolescent screamers and scatterers.
The angel's reassurance to the shepherds is one of the most quoted of all passages in scripture:
"Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." (Luke 2:10-12)
As if this angel's appearance and message wasn't traumatic enough, the shepherd's then saw "a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." (Luke 2: 13-14)
Because the Colonel believes that Jesus was the incarnation of God's Son, and that God's Son is the Commander of the Army of the Lord, he believes this "multitude of the heavenly host" was the Army of the Lord.
The Colonel can't prove that, and far more learned men than he may scoff at the notion, but the Colonel likes to think that the Army of the Lord wouldn't have missed out on singing in this cantata.
But, why are a ragtag group of lowly shepherds the recipient of these "good tidings of great joy." Why the shepherds?
Why not the High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem?
Or, some other literate person or group of people. Why not make this angelic appearance and announcement on the steps of the temple at high noon on the day before the Sabbath, when all of Jerusalem would be in attendance?
Two reasons, the Colonel thinks.
First, he believes that the angel of the Lord and the multitude of heavenly hosts appeared to the shepherds at the very moment of Jesus' birth. And, the Colonel believes the shepherds were chosen to receive these good tidings for their symbolism throughout God's word. God didn't just pick the shepherds on a whim.
God does nothing on a whim.
God inspired David to write the Psalm to demonstrate the loving care God has for His people -- like a shepherd cares for his sheep.
Jesus' Himself used the shepherd analogy numerous times to teach regarding God's love and the purpose of Jesus' own ministry.
Secondly, but perhaps most importantly, the Colonel believes God picked the shepherds for what they were watching.
Just up the road a few miles from the fields outside Bethlehem, stood the temple in Jerusalem -- the only acceptable location to which all Jews were to bring their most important sacrifices. From the beginning of His relationship with man, God demanded a blood sacrifice to atone for sin of man.
Not just any sacrificial animal would do. It was supposed to be one without blemish. An animal of higher value than the rest.
And, in remembrance of the Passover lambs whose blood marked the doorposts of the Hebrews and excluded them from the plague of the death of the first born in Egypt; young, defenseless sheep were the traditional sacrifice brought to the temple in Jerusalem.
It's entirely possible that the shepherds outside of Bethlehem were watching over flocks from which came lambs for blood sacrifice.
The Colonel likes to believe so.
The Colonel believes that sacrificing a lamb only temporarily atoned for a man's sin. He believes this because a Jew didn't just sacrifice a lamb once -- he did it every year.
The Colonel believes that God sent His messenger angel to proclaim to shepherds watching over lambs, whose sacrifice was a temporary atonement, that the Lamb of God was come whose sacrifice would be final.
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