Happy New Year’s Day!
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, January 1, 2026 (Donate)
New Years, as it is affectionally known, is the seventh day
of Christmas. Like New Year’s Eve, this is one of the two most popular holidays
of the Twelve Days of Christmas that has stuck around and still has a big celebration.
Years in ancient times were very important as they marked
time since Genesis 1:14—along with days (evening-morning cycle), weeks (per
Creation Week), and month (moon cycles). The year is broken into 4 cyclical seasons—Winter,
Spring, Summer and Autumn (aka Fall). Though where I live, we often joke is Fall,
Winter, Spring and Road Construction season!
Seasons Of The Year
Each season of the year is broken apart by the Winter and Summer Solstices and the Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes. The Equinoxes (think equal) are when the daylight portion of the day is equal the nighttime portion of the day.
The Solstices (in the Northern Hemisphere) are when we have maximum
amount of darkness (Winter Solstice) and the maximum amount sunlight (Summer Solstice)
per day—of course, it is the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere like Australia
and New Zealand.
But years marked our calendars based on the resetting of the
constellations in the sky every ~365.25 days. That ~.25 is why every four years
we have a leap year to get the calendar back to where it is supposed to be. Oh,
did I mention that every 100 years we don’t have a leap year, unless is it divisible
by 400. So, the years AD 1700, 1800, and 1900, there was no leap year. But the
years AD 1600 and 2000, there was one.
So why is this? It is part of the factoring because that
0.25 isn’t exact! It’s actually 365.2422 days in a year. Did I mention that we also
have leap seconds? They are tallied in every once in a while, at the end of
June or December, but for a different reason.
Years Are For Measuring
Even so, years are the primary measurement unit for longer
amounts of time. Often dates were in relation to a king's reigned. Consider:
· David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. (2 Samuel 5:4, NKJV)
· In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. (Daniel 1:1, NKJV)
· Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene. (Luke 3:1, NKJV)
It is only fitting to measure time of years since Christ,
who is the King of Kings forever. This is why the AD/BC dating system exists (the
CE/BCE merely copies this).
Let’s not forget the reason for each new year. Christ, who is God
who came in the flesh at the first Advent, uphold all things into existence—the
world, the cosmos, and time itself exist by the power of God. Give Him the
glory for each new year.
Happy New Year!
Bodie Hodge, Ken
Ham's son in law, has been an apologist since 1998 helping out in various
churches and running an apologetics website. He spent 21 years working at Answers
in Genesis as a speaker, writer, and researcher as well as a founding
news anchor for Answers News. He was also head of the Oversight
Council.
Bodie
launched Biblical Authority Ministries in 2015 as a personal
website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a 501(c)(3). He has spoken
on multiple continents and hosts of US states in churches, colleges, and
universities. He is married with four children.
