Counting Down with Gratitude, Hope, & Trust

At midnight tonight, millions of people will count backwards from 10 and cheer as the calendar flips to a new year. For a brief moment, the world will pause together ... looking back at what has been and forward to what might be.

While the New Year can carry spiritual weight for many of us as we set faith-related resolutions, the origins of January 1 are both secular and Roman. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar reformed the calendar, fixing January 1 as the start of the civil year and naming the first month January after Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways and transitions.

Early Christians were wary. Pagan rituals, heavy drinking, and superstition surrounded the day, and the church resisted the festival that was shaped more by empire than by Jesus Christ.

Instead, the early church organized time around Jesus. By the fourth century, Christians lived by a liturgical calendar -- Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost -- marking the story of salvation rather than fiscal quarters. In medieval Europe, the “new year” might begin on Christmas Day, Easter, or March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation), depending on the region. Time was not neutral; it was theological.

Church leaders were also clear about what not to do. In AD 567, the Council of Tours urged Christians to avoid pagan New Year revelry, calling communities instead toward prayer and self-examination. Gradually, January 1 was reclaimed with a different emphasis. It became known as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ -- eight days after Christmas (Luke 2:21) -- a reminder that God entered fully into human time, covenant, and vulnerability.

The Reformation simplified the calendar but retained the instinct to pause and reflect. One of the most enduring Christian responses to New Year’s emerged in 1770, when John Wesley led a late-night service on December 31 in London. The Watch Night service invited worshipers to sing, pray, confess, and renew their covenant with God as the year ended. That practice spread and took deep root in African American churches, where Watch Night gatherings carried particular power -- particularly on December 31, 1862, as enslaved communities waited in prayer for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect.

Across these centuries, a pattern emerges: Christians did not ignore the turning of the year, but they resisted treating it as magic. The emphasis has never been on predicting the future or reinventing oneself overnight. It has always been on remembering God’s faithfulness, telling the truth about the past, and entrusting the unknown days ahead to grace.

As we celebrate New Year's Eve tonight, that ancient posture still matters. Tonight does not require grand resolutions or curated optimism. It invites gratitude -- Thus far the Lord has helped us (1 Samuel 7:12). It invites hope -- His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). And it invites trust that the God who met us in the past year will meet us again tomorrow.