New Year Celebration-Africans are Faith Borrowers

All the major religions claimed to be directed from one God who is consistent but they all have different calendars including new years, different rules and so on. One will direct that you eat pork, another will direct that you should not. One will direct that you should not work on Sunday, another will direct that you work on Sunday. Which one is right we do not know and they all claim to come from one God who is consistent.  One uses solar calendar, others use lunar calendar. As said earlier, they all have different new years, one celebrating January 1 as new year. January, if it is true that it was named after Janus, a Roman god of beginning and doorways, then celebrating January 1 means celebrating the birth of that Roman god. Many other religions have said no to January 1 but have different dates. None of them can say with certainty the day, using the solar calendar, when the earth starts revolving around the sun. The chance that it is January 1 is 1:365.25 because we have 365.25 days in a year. What we are all sure of is our individual new years, that is, our birthdays. All these inconsistencies are what I will call religious racing; every religion selling its idea to gain more membership. Racing here means competition that can be constructive or destructive. If it is a constructive competition, it can also mean creativity, development, checks and balances and other positive values. We may then talk briefly about RACING ECONOMICS. If you are a political leader and you make economic policies that do not embrace racing, it would probably fail. Constructive racing is important for our existence. In the same vein, we have RACING DEMOCRACY. A democracy that does not embrace constructive racing will fail leading to conflicts. Mostly all religions set positive beliefs and rules, for example, do not steal, do not commit adultery, respect your elders, give charity and so on. These positive beliefs and rules are constructive racing to build a positive society. Unfortunately, the fanatics in the various religions have been engaging in destructive racing promoting conflicts and other vices.

An African spiritual leader warned: “Believe or not, if you worship January 1 and the date is not your birthday, your spirit is taken away. This message is for those who are spiritually inclined”, he said. He warned, “Do not give your spirit to the Janus- the Roman god of beginning and doorways. Forget what your spiritual leaders tell you because he may not be knowledgeable enough”
“We Africans have been so spiritually battered that majority of us go to worship places on this date to celebrate the Roman spirit thinking we are celebrating our New Year.”
“I agree that the sun and the moon are good to measure calendar. I also agree that our lovely planet earth revolves around the sun in 365¼ days which creates the New Year. But nobody knows the exact date when the earth starts revolving around the sun. Nobody knows when our planet earth was created and starts revolving around the sun. It could have been January 3, or May 2 or July 1 or any other date. What is clear to all of us is that it revolves in 365¼ days.
“Nobody knows the New Year for all of us but we all know our individual new year which is our birthday and that should be our spiritual day.”
“We should also be mindful that January 1 New Year in Nigeria is different from January 1 new year in Australia, USA, Japan and many other countries because of timezone differences. This is why our group New Year in this earth, if we all know when the earth is created cannot necessarily be 12.01 am of January 1. It could have been midnight or noon in some countries. While in some countries, there are 3 or more new years like in USA. As we celebrate our new year in Nigeria, Australia had already celebrated and USA is still in the old year!
“I think we should all pay attention to our birthday which is more spiritual. We should know the time and place. If you are born 2 am on Jan. 30, in Nigeria, if during your birthday you are in New York, USA, your birthday should be 8 am on Jan. 29 because there is 6 hours difference between New York, USA and Nigeria during the month of January. Even this time zone is challengeable because the time zone differences are set by human beings.
“If we, Africans, need a group new year, we should formulate one for ourselves. Africans are very old race and it is time to start defining a pride for ourselves and stop consuming foreign race practices. The DNA has proved our pride place as the long existing race. You do not even need DNA to know this. Mere observation will tell because the longer you exist in this world, the more the diversity that you will experience. If you have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great, great grandchildren and so on; these children will migrate and develop diversities in terms of culture change, dialect, language and so on. It is on record that the most diverse continent is Africa. In Nigeria alone, we have about 250 ethnic groups. Yet, we are made to think we are an inferior race because we embrace foreign race practices. We are made to believe everything in Africa is bad including our religion and tradition only to embrace foreign religion and tradition that have similar practices with Africans but theirs are okay. Nobody has well documented history of Black Africans 5000 years back before Jesus or in the days of Adam, Abraham and other prophets of the Bible and Quran. I doubt if our African spiritual leaders even know what they called 100 years of history talk less of 5000 years. In 25 years, you can change the world talk less of 100 years. United States of America with all the achievements is about 500 years of history of the settlers. There is no doubt that Africans was marginalized by the well known documented religious histories; there is no adequate mention of the events and people of Africans.
God will rescue us from this miseducation and misunderstanding. Amen!!!
 
Attorney Owolabi Salis, FCA, CPA, ACIB
Africans are great people
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