Celebrating New Year’s Eve has pagan origins. Early European and Asian traditions marked New Year’s Eve on different days, in different months, following different calendars. Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, after whom the month of January was named, was honoured with festivals on January 1 from 153 BC; long before the dawn of Christianity. The Julian calendar of 46 BC adopted January 1.
Uncomfortable with the recognition of the Roman god, early Christian leaders attempted to replace January 1 with dates more related to the Christian story.
But a 1582 AD revision of the Julian calendar by Pope Gregory XIII retained January 1. The Gregorian calendar is still used in most of Christendom. However, the day is celebrated as a semi-religious, semi-secular cultural event. It has far less religious significance than Christmas or Easter.
I have often heard Uganda’s Pentecostal pastors claiming that God had given them special commands for the annual switch-over, which they now call ‘pass-over’, ‘vision night’, and so on. As God’s dog, I know that God (Jehovah) is in a state of divine rest. He cannot issue commands elevating the switch-over above its modest secular-cum-religious status. Centrality of the day as a religious festival was for the Roman god, Janus, represented in religious art as having two faces (one face looking back, and the other face into the future). But Janus himself is comatose, if not dead.
He cannot see the fuss by latter-day neo-pagan Christian entrepreneurs, who have identified a business opportunity, complete with gimmicks of specially written and enveloped appeals to God, where the deal is obviously the enclosed cash. Stretching the celebration over a whole day has nothing to do with divine instructions, but Uganda’s culture of redundancy and binge indulgence. Marriage and funeral events have also been vulgarised and stretched into tiresome full-day exhibitions.
Last Sunday, at their threesome Impact Radio breakfast talk show, one of the pastors explained that the freedom to practice their chaotic/anarchic religion (he hyperbolically used the word ‘buyaaye’) was given by President Museveni; a gain that made many of them support Museveni’s re-election. By contrast, Opposition politicians, whose campaign is met with barbaric force, cannot see reasons for supporting Museveni. Is it a draw, a balance between selfish short-sighted opportunism and unrealistic liberal aspiration? Will God, Jehovah, wake up from his repose and give the nation a more humane direction?
Or will the Roman god, Janus, be resurrected to take full charge; consecrate the status quo and re-dedicate it as a new beginning? These are intriguing questions that cannot be answered now. We can only conjecture by observing the behaviour of Uganda’s demons. Another pastor spent much of December at his Kavule centre advertising the spectacular intervention that God (Jehovah) would bring. He divulged that he would not exorcise demons at the switch-over.
This would be done before the big day, implying that 2026 would dawn with demon-free devotees. Well, Uganda’s demons are as stubborn as they are shameless. They are back! This very Sunday, only four days later, pastors everywhere are screaming and deploying balls of fire and other weapons to drive them off. The optimism before December 31 has completely evaporated. The prophets of Janus masquerading as prophets of Jehovah have been exposed. They are unable to draw power from either camp. The election demon is brandishing its long teeth and wolfish claws. As citizens, we are on our own, the country in our hands. Justice Simon Byabakama and his Electoral Commission can help us to save it, or conspire to sink it.