The Circumcision of Jesus
This feast commemorates the traditional date for the ritual circumcision of Jesus on his eighth day. The festival was known by the 400s in the West; in the Eastern church it coincides with St Basil’s Day. Legends grew up around the child’s foreskin and its preservation as a sacred relic which could perform miracles. Charlemagne was said to have given it to Pope Leo III in 800 but as many as 18 different churches have claimed to possess it. Protestants abandoned interest in the feast and recent Roman Catholic decrees have renamed January 1 “The Octave of the Nativity”.
January 1 also saw a number of other remarkable moments in church history:
404 The monk Telemachus is torn apart by a Roman mob for trying to prevent a gladiator fight.
1431 The birth of one of the Bad Popes of the Renaissance, Rodrigo Borgia, who went on to become the notorious Pope Alexander VI.
1484 The birth of Huldreich Zwingli, a Catholic priest who led the Protestant Reformation in Zurich.
1773 The first performance of the hymn “Amazing Grace”, sung to accompany a sermon by its author John Newton.
1795 French churches, which had been closed during the worst moments of the French Revolution, are allowed to reopen.
1814 The birth of Hong Xiuchuan. Influenced by reading the tracts of some Christian missionaries to China, Hong is led to proclaim himself the Little Brother of Jesus Christ, establish the Heavenly Kingdom and provoke the worst civil war in history, the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the death of 20,000,000 people.
1927 The official outbreak of the Cristero War, a rebellion of Mexican Christians against the anti-religious regime of President Calles.