OK what's up with this? Whyrya posting about Fall and Jewish stuff, arnchu supposed to post Lutheran stuff? Here's why. Past Elder, the blog, started 22 February 2007 and its Blogoral Cycle (a joke on the term "sanctoral calendar" from the church calendar) takes particular note of how our church year comes from and fulfills the cycle of observances in the Jewish calendar. However in Fall, where the Jewish calendar is FULL of stuff, the Christian church calendar has NOTHING. Yet this is precisely where, if it indeed comes from and fulfills the Jewish cycle, one would expect it to be full of stuff too!
Not to mention (I like to say that before I mention something) that in the world this season has two names and two official start times, and some unofficial start times too, and the church calendar has nothing special.
So what's up with that? Here's the 2019 version of my post about it.
I. About Fall.
In 2019, the official start of Fall here in Omaha is 23 September at 250am Central Daylight Time. One hour earlier in the Eastern time zone. Worldwide, the season begins at the same time, which in 2019 is 0750 hours 23 September GMT aka UTC. Huh?
OK 0750 in 24-hour time is 7:50am. OK now what's GMT? It means Greenwich Mean Time, aka, which means also known as, UTC, which means Universal Time Co-ordinates. To get GMT from Central Time Zone you add six hours, five during "daylight savings time"; from Eastern Time Zone five, or four in DST. To get CDT or EDT from GMT you do the reverse, subtract. GMT never goes on "daylight" time and is always the same as a worldwide point of common reference. Greenwich of course is in Mother England, but, GMT is not necessarily local time there since England has "daylight" time too -- BST, or British Summer Time -- as does the EU, so even in London, which is in the GMT time zone, you gotta add an hour for local time during "daylight" summer hours.
Well actually, that's just one of the official starts of Fall. Holy crap, what's up with that -- two official starts? And we said there's unofficial ones too? And to a season with two names! What's up with THAT? And that's before we even get to this post's actual What's Up With That? Here's the deal.
A. About the Two Starts.
The first thing is, there's two Falls, the astronomical one and the meteorological one. We just went over the astronomical one. Astronomical Fall is determined by the relative amount of light and dark in a day, in turn determined by the relative position of the Earth and the Sun. Just like the word Man, which can mean either all human beings or just the male ones, the word Day is used sometimes for the whole 24 hour period or just the light part of it.
Astronomical Fall starts on the day, as in 24 hour period, with equal amounts of light and dark in it. They're not exactly equal but pretty damn close. That day is called the autumnal equinox ("equal night" in Latin). Fall goes to the day with the least amount of day light in it, called the winter solstice ("sun stand still", solstitium, sol or sun and sistere or to stand still in Latin). And some think Latin is not still with us! But we all note these daylight changes do not align exactly with the air temperature changes. That is because of the thermal latency of land and sea.
Judas H Priest, what is thermal latency? How many what's up with thats can we have in one post? Don't freak. "Thermal latency" are simply more Latin derived words for the phenomenon that while as the earth rotates toward and then away from the sun, thereby giving more and then less heat, it takes both land and water a while to warm up or cool off.
Meteorological Fall is determined by the changes in air temperature. Huh, if it's meteorology why ain't it about meteors? Holy crap another What's Up With That! Now ain't you glad you read Past Elder so you can know all this stuff? Meteorology comes from the Greek meteoros or "up in the sky", and -ology or the study of something. Matter of fact, although weather forecasters take flak for having the only job where you get paid to be wrong, meteorology was started by Aristotle in a book by that name he wrote in 350 BC in which, with no modern instruments whatever but just being a keen observer and smarter than all hell, he described what is now called the hydrologic cycle.
Don't freak, more Greek derived words, here meaning water cycle, in which water is not just distinct from land but interacts with land in changing cycles in various forms; liquid, otherwise known as rain, vapour, otherwise known as fog, and solid, otherwise known as ice. Think that's just some musty ancient stuff, who cares? Think again, because our planet, though we call it Earth, is actually mostly water, and a planet with a lot of water over long periods of time loses hydrogen, which is part of water (H2O, remember?), which in turn leads to what is called the "greenhouse effect", which leads to more hydrogen loss, which leads to more greenhouse effect, and that is an entirely natural cycle. Climate is going to change. But, that change can be accelerated by what Man's activities put in the air. Now, while we don't know exactly how these two affect each other, and while various points on the political spectrum act as if we do, they DO interact, and everybody is concerned as hell about that now or damned well ought to be.
Sound musty now? Old Ari was sharp as a tack, wish we had more like him now with modern instruments. Which is why, besides Blogoral Calendars and stuff like that, Past Elder goes on about musty ancient stuff -- because it helps us understand where in the hell we are right now and what "where we are right now" even is.
So, meteorological seasons are determined by average air temperatures, which lag behind the astronomical events of solstices and equinoxes that determine astronomical seasons, due to thermal water latency. Fall in this definition is from 1 September to 30 November. Well, in the northern hemisphere that is. Our planet being a sphere, when one side rotates toward the sun the other rotates away, so Fall in the southern hemisphere happens when our Spring does, and vice versa.
There's your two official starts, but in the US there's two unofficial starts also. One of them is Labor Day, which became a federal holiday in 1894 and happens on the first Monday in September. The other is set by your local school board, who as any kid or parent knows, is God, and determines when Summer ends by when school starts. When I grew up school started after Labor Day, the unofficial start of Fall, and after 1 September, the official start of meteorological Fall. Now it starts in August sometime when you oughta still be swimming in the city pool and stuff like that, probably because they don't want any lawsuits so they have room for "snow days" in the Winter. When I grew up a snow day meant you got up earlier, shovelled the crap outta the way and went about your business, leaving early because you drive slower, or should.
B. About the Two Names.
Oh yeah, about the two names for the same season thing, so we can clear up all the What's Up With Thats before we get on to the main What's Up With That. Guess what? More Latin. The original name was the Latin autumnus, and the modern languages derived from Latin, like French, all have similar words for it. But English isn't totally Latin derived, the Latin and Greek stuff is an overlay from the French-speaking Normans and their conquest of England in 1066 onto basically a form of German. In German itself autumn is Der Herbst, which means harvest, and that is what the season was called in English too, Harvest. It wasn't until the 1500s, when people were tending to live more in towns than in the country, that "harvest" in English became more the activity of harvesting and the season when it happens began to be called Autumn and Fall.
OK we saw the derivation of "autumn" from autumnus but where did this fall thing come from? Because the leaves are falling, and the amount of daylight is falling, and the year is drawing to its close. In the 1600s English colonisation of the Americas was in full swing, and both terms came over, but back in Mother England by the 1700s "fall" fell to "autumn" in usage, and that is why now Autumn is used in both places but Fall in mostly heard in the US.
Sukkoth is the easy part of this Fall stuff. It begins at sunset, the start of the Biblical day, on 15 Tishrei in the Jewish calendar. Expressing this date in the secular calendar, in 2019 it starts at sunset of 13 October. Ironically, the secular Gregorian calendar is religious in origin, being commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to correct the drift of the Julian calendar so Easter would happen about when the first one did. More about calendars in the next post, on Michaelmas. Remember the Jewish calendar is a lunar one so things move when expressed in our calendar, and, the "day" starts at sundown. Next year, 2020, Sukkoth will start sunset of 2 October. It was sunset of 23 September in 2018, 4 October in 2017, 16 October in 2016, 27 September in 2015, 8 October in 2014, 18 September in 2013, 30 September in 2012, of 12 October in 2011, and of 22 September in 2010.
God's pretty straight up about what he wants. Speaking of which, let's see what the real God, not the school board, wants regarding observances through the year and what all this stuff in Fall is.
II. Here's What God Wants For A Festival Calendar.
In the religion God delivered to the Jews in the Old Testament, he commands three major festivals: 1) Pesach or Passover; 2) Shavuot or Pentecost, also called Weeks; 3) Sukkot, called Tabernacles or Booths. These three are the Shalosh Regalim, the Three Pilgrim Festivals where all Jews go to Jerusalem.
And in the Fall, in addition to Sukkot, before it there is the High Holidays, more properly the Yamim Noraim or Days of Awe. These are the Ten Days of Repentance, from Rosh Hashanah, the so-called Jewish New Year, through Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year, commanded in the Law of Moses. Then comes Sukkoth itself, which runs seven days. Then comes the Eighth Day, Shemini Atzeret, when normal living indoors resumes (huh, what's up with that; hang on, we'll get to it below, or as we say, vide infra, Latin for "see below", a term once common in the scholarly apparatus -- you know, footnotes and stuff -- of scholarly works and which I for sure would use if I ever resume writing like a PhD). We're not done yet; then comes Simchat Torah, Rejoicing in Torah, with the conclusion of the annual reading through of Torah and starting it right over again, and dancing that often goes on for hours. LOTS of stuff in the Fall. Or Autumn.
In some of the other posts, we saw the first festival, Passover, transformed by Christ at the Last Supper, or Last Seder, into what we call Holy Communion, the new and eternal testament of his body and blood, and ratified by his Death and Resurrection which we celebrate as an event in time on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Then we saw with the second festival God himself counts the commanded Omer and transforms the celebration of the giving of the Law at Sinai at Pentecost by the giving of the promised Holy Spirit to the Apostles, which we celebrate as an event in time on the day also called Pentecost.
Then, for the third festival, what -- the whole thing seems to, uh, fall apart!! Where's the transformed Rosh Ha-Shanah, where's the transformed Days of Awe, where's the transformed Yom Kippur, where's the transformed Sukkoth, where's the transformed Eighth Day and Rejoicing in Torah? And where's the dancing?
Nowhere.
The Christian calendar is entirely absent of such things. Fall, full of observances in Judaism, comes and goes with nothing until the secular Thanksgiving and then Advent which is a time of preparation for Christmas. So does the parallel fall apart here, or perhaps show itself to be irrelevant anyway if it exists at all?
No. Consider how Jesus gives himself. Christ has himself become our atonement, that to which the Day of Atonement led. The "Day of Atonement" is the historical Good Friday, once for all. Rosh Ha-Shanah too, the day on which creation was completed and God judges each person for the coming year, has been fulfilled in God's having re-created lost Man by making justification possible because of the merit of Christ's sacrifice. That is how we are now inscribed, not just for the coming year but for eternity. So these two are absent because they have served their purpose and been fulfilled.
But what of Sukkot? At Sukkot, one lives, or at least takes one's meals, in a temporary structure called a sukkah in Hebrew -- a booth, a tabernacle, not in one's actual home. This is to remember the passage of the people after the Passover and Pentecost to the Promised Land. Zechariah (14:16-19) predicts that in the time of the Messiah the feast will be observed not just by Jews but by all humanity coming to Jerusalem for its observance. That would be a pretty big event. It ain't happening. And a transformed Sukkoth in the Christian calendar ain't even happening either. So what is the deal here?
III. Here's The Christian Sukkoth.
Consider. Christ is our Passover, in whose blood we are washed and made clean, and the Holy Spirit has empowered the spread of this Good News beginning on that Pentecost recorded in Acts. But the end of the story, unlike the arrival in the Promised Land, has not happened. The real Promised Land is not a piece of geography but heaven itself, the ultimate Jerusalem. So, there cannot be a Christian Sukkoth because we are still in our booths, as it were, not in our permanent homes, still on our pilgrimage to the Promised Land, and what Zechariah saw is happening, as "the nations", all people, join in this journey given first to the Jews and then to all Man, the Gentiles.
Our Sukkot is our life right now, in our "booths" or temporary homes on our way to heaven! So this feast awaits its transformation, and that is why it is absent. The first two of the "pilgrimage festivals", the Shalosh Regalim, have been transformed, into the basis of not just our calendar but our life and faith itself, but the third will be heaven itself, toward which we journey as we live in our booths here on the way.
While we do not, therefore, have a certain observance of a transformed Sukkot in our calendar, being in our booths presently, we do have something of it as we go. Our nation, and others too, have a secular, national day of Thanksgivng at the end of harvest time, preserving that aspect of thankfulness for our earthly ingathering of the fruits of our labour. And in the final weeks of the Sundays after Trinity, which happen in Fall, we focus on the End Times in our readings, the great ingathering that will be for all nations when our Sukkoth here is ended, not just at death personally but finally at the Last Day.
Before the Conclusion, a word or two on Eastern Orthodox observance, in which some consider the feast of the Transfiguration takes the place of Sukkot, fruits are blessed to commemorate Peter's suggestion to build three booths, one for Christ, Moses and Elijah each. Well, in the Eastern observance the "Blessing of the First Fruits" does give it a harvest connexion, but, Sukkoth is not about first but last fruits. And, in the Transfiguration Jesus turns down Peter's suggestion. No booths. Instead we see Jesus' fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah), and the appearance of all three persons in God, as he is about to go to Jerusalem for the Crucifixion, Death, and Resurrection.
Related to that, the Feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated in both the Eastern and the Western church on 6 August, not at all the time of Sukkoth. The West had the feast, but only settled on this date in 1456, when the Kingdom of Hungary broke the Siege of Belgrade and forced the Islamic Ottomans back. News of the victory made it to Rome on 6 August, and in view of its importance Pope Callixtus III put the Transfiguration in the general Roman church calendar on this date.
We Lutherans do not follow this, but follow a tradition which places the Transfiguration on the last Sunday after Epiphany, placing the event where it is in the course of Jesus' life followed by the Gospel readings of the traditional church cycle.
In our times however, 6 August has found two significances that relate to the Transfiguration, one of which is altogether spooky, which I have never heard anyone East or West mention.
6 August is the anniversary of the World Wide Web, when in 1991 the first server with the first browser and the first website went online, at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research; the acronym is from the name in French, it's in suburban Geneva), Sir Tim Berners-Lee (an Englishman!) making his ideas proposed 12 March 1989 a reality. A reality which allows us to not build booths but go into the Jerusalem, so to speak, of life as never before.
6 August is also the anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons, Hiroshima. It puts in stark contrast the world and God: one can approach a transfiguration by God shown in this event, or one can approach a transfiguration by Man shown in Hiroshima -- salvation is of the Lord.
IV. Conclusion.
At my wife's funeral, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the secular Sukkoth, in 1997, the pastor concluded the sermon by saying: A few days ago most of us celebrated a thanksgiving that lasted one day, but Nancy began one that lasts an eternity.
So is the promise to us all. And that's what happened to Sukkot. And also to the rejoicing and dancing, not for hours, but eternity!
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