Ashli Babbitt was a wife, mother, 14-year Air Force veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan who traveled from San Diego to DC to protest the theft of Donald Trump’s 2020 landslide.

After the rally she went to the US Capitol to peaceably assemble to petition the government for the redress of grievances. At the Capitol while looking through a window broken by others, this unarmed woman was gunned down without warning by Capitol Police.

Please pray for Ashli, her husband, her children, and the others she leaves behind.

And as you remember her, say her name.

As we head into 2021, remember that Americans

in the middle of a smallpox epidemic (death rate over 30%)

will cross an icy river and

march for miles in a snow storm,

to kill their enemies in their sleep,

on Christmas.

Then to toughen up, Americans will spend the next winter at Valley Forge.

Twenty-twenty was the bicentennial of the birth of the Civil-War General, William Tecumseh Sherman. Before his brilliant campaign that culminated in the capture of Atlanta, GA and his march to the sea that contributed to the defeat of the South, Sherman was in command of a portion of the Union forces at Shiloh, TN.

After a disastrous first day at the battle of Shiloh, the story goes that

Sherman said to his commanding officer, Ulysses S. Grant, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” After a puff of his cigar, Grant calmly replied, “Yep. Lick ’em tomorrow, though.”

We have had the devil’s own year. So, for us, tomorrow dawns.

Be not afraid. We win; they lose.

On Tuesday, 2020 December 29th President Trump recognized religious freedom in a proclamation commemorating the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket on 1170 December 29th.

As I noted in my 2020 December 29th post early dates are in the Julian calendar.

With the two historical anniversaries in December, let us convert those dates to the Gregorian Calendar. The Pilgrims’ landing is recorded as Julian December 19th and Becket’s death on Julian December 29th. December 19th is six days before Julian Christmas and December 29th is four days after Julian Christmas.

The Julian 2020 Christmas falls on Gregorian 2021 January 7th. So, Becket’s anniversary will be on 7+4 = 11 and the Pilgrims’ anniversary is on 7-6=1, today. Happy 400th anniversary, Pilgrims!

Four-hundred years ago the Pilgrims landed in what is now Massachusetts. They had intended to land at Jamestown in what is now Virginia.

As they recounted,

“We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer, and it being now the 19th of December” (Mourt’s Relation, 1622, commonly attributed to colonists William Bradford and Edward Winslow).

Reading this in the 21st century we might be amused by the mention of ‘beer’ and not give a moment’s thought to the ‘19th of December’. However, both take on new meaning for us when we consider the original meaning of the words.

For the Pilgrims in 1620, Dec 19th was on the Julian calendar not the Gregorian calendar we use today. So the 400th anniversary of their landing is not Dec 19, 2020.

Likewise for the Pilgrims in 1620 beer meant something much different than it does today. At that time water was usually contaminated. Water often carried disease. It was much healthier to drink beer. (Just as Jesus’s miracle at the wedding feast at Cana, did not just transform water into wine, but in fact transformed non-potable unhealthy water into clean drinkable wine.)

Original meaning is important as that is what survived the arduous process to become law. Redefining words is a cheat.