The New Year is a Time of Thresholds

Life is full of doorways and thresholds. New Year’s Day is one of the most well-known of these doorways.

God of Doorways

January is named for the Roman god Janus, who ruled over doorways, gates, thresholds, and beginnings. With one face Janus looked backward to the past. With another face, he looked to the future. Rather than the negative sense of being two-faced, Janus’ double gaze represented wisdom. What he learned from the past, he could use to make good decisions for the time ahead. Just as a doorway looks in two directions, Janus could see both the inner world and the outer one. So, January is a transition time, when you look back on last year and make plans for the next. It’s a time when you look at the world around you, but you also look at your interior experience.

Threshold Moments

Our threshold moments are often marked with sacred occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals. At times they are enjoyable, like a graduation or the birth of a child. Others can be painful, like a divorce, the death of a loved one, or loss of employment. Of course, some are a combination of pain and pleasure. Retirement, for example, is a celebration of long service, along with anticipatory grief of missing beloved colleagues.

Threshold moments are when you leave behind one phase or aspect of life and transition to another. Whether passing through these doorways is enjoyable or not, we mark them as sacred. I’m reminded of the European tradition of the groom carrying his bride across the threshold, and the African American tradition of jumping the broom at a wedding. Actual doorways or symbolic thresholds are often indicators that nothing will be the same again.

A Fiftieth Birthday

Years ago, my late stepdad celebrated his 50th birthday with a huge party, surrounded by friends. The occasion was marked by black balloons, a black cake, and the gift of a walking cane equipped with a squeeze-ball horn and rear-view mirror. Some folks celebrate their half-century by marking the pivotal year with a blend of celebration and recognition that it’s all downhill from here. In 2022, I crossed the threshold of a half-century with quiet fishing on a lake and dinner with friends. I preferred to silently slip through, rather than bursting through the door of 50 years.

Passover as a Threshold Time

The Jewish celebration of Passover remembers the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. Participants marked this literal threshold time by applying lamb’s blood to their doorposts and lintels to keep the Death Angel at bay. That night was different from all other nights because the people went to bed enslaved, and they woke up as a free nation.

Standing Stones

Israel continued to mark threshold events by putting up standing stones. Jacob erected a stone at Bethel to commemorate his wrestling match with God. Israel set up stones at Gilgal to mark their own entrance into the Holy Land. From a sociological perspective, standing stones and thresholds are the same thing.

Around the globe, countless cultures erected standing stones as thresholds, marking the doorway between the spiritual realm and the earthly. Perhaps the most famous of these is Stonehenge. Archaeologists, anthropologists, geologists, and anthropologists argue about the exact purpose of the structure. Most believe that Stonehenge existed to mark special times and seasons and celestial events. The unquestionable thing about it is the prevalence of structural doorways: thresholds to another world, or another state of being.

How Thresholds Don’t Matter

The amazing thing about thresholds is how significant and yet insignificant they are at the same time. I am the same man after my 50th birthday as I was before that date on the calendar. Yet I observe how people who have crossed that threshold gain more respect than those who have not. But it’s not the date on the calendar that matters. It’s the growth in maturity and wisdom that comes with years. I would feel that even if I never celebrated a birthday or received an envelope in the mail from AARP.

Our tradition of ordination is similar. “Touch not the Lord’s anointed,” is a phrase I hear many Pentecostals and Charismatics say, warning people not to question someone who is ordained. Yet, in my own ordination, I found no difference in myself after the laying on of hands. Like birthdays, ordinations are thresholds of human construction. They separate the sacred people from the profane, forgetting that we are all one in Christ and that there is no difference. After serving a couple of decades in ministry, I might argue the pointlessness of ordination. When will we realize that it does nothing but create an arbitrary and meaningless separation between people?

My marriage is much the same. Formalities do not indicate commitments. My wife was my wife before she was my wife, you might say. Because we are from two different countries, we knew that not all of my American folks could travel to Canada for a wedding. And not all of our Canadian friends and family would be able to attend a US wedding. So, a year before the legal wedding, we had a commitment ceremony in a US church, with gathered friends and family, and officiated by a minister. The only difference between that and a legal wedding was that no papers were filed with the government.

378 days after that, we had a legal ceremony at the home of my wife’s parents. This time, the pastor filed the paperwork with the government. But was my commitment to Christina any more real after the second ceremony than it was after the first? Absolutely not! In fact, neither the first wedding nor the second one made us married. That was a spiritual reality in our hearts long before we stood before a pastor in and exchanged vows in either country.

How Thresholds Do Matter

By now it probably sounds like thresholds are meaningless. They are incredibly important—yet they need to be kept in perspective. Here’s what I mean:

 If I never attended my college graduation, that wouldn’t make me less of a college graduate. My diploma from Virginia Commonwealth University proves my accomplishment. So, what’s the point of the graduation ceremony? Graduates work long hours, and families offer their support—so it’s natural that they would want to mark the achievement with a ceremony. It doesn’t make the graduate—but it marks the graduate.

If I never had a wedding ceremony, that wouldn’t make me less married. But we wanted to share our love for each other with family and friends—so we invited them to participate. Our weddings didn’t make our marriage—they marked it. Our two different anniversaries in December help us to remember.

A birthday cake doesn’t make me fifty years old. Laying on of hands didn’t make me ordained. Blood didn’t make the Death Angel pass over. Yet, these markers indicate a significant change. Standing stones aren’t thresholds in and of themselves; instead, they represent threshold moments in people’s lives.

It’s important to mark threshold events because they help us to remember. If I ever have imposter syndrome at work, I can take a look at my credentials and feel like I know what I’m doing. If I ever feel distant from my wife, I can look at our wedding pictures, polish my wedding ring, and remind myself of our intimacy. Marking these thresholds doesn’t make them—it memorializes them. And that designation is important.

What Will This January Mark for You?

January is a time to look both forward and backward. The New Year marks a gateway between what was, and what will be. It’s only now, in this present moment, that you can stand and look in both directions.

In years to come, you might look back on today and say, “January 2023 marked a change in my life.” You could say, “That’s when I started to regain my physical fitness.” Or “That’s when I got sober.” Maybe you’ll say, “That’s when I reconnected with my estranged parent.” Perhaps, “That’s when I began to deconstruct or reconstruct my faith.” Or “That’s when I came out of the closet.”  Whatever shift is happening for you, I hope you’ll mark it in some way. Write a letter. Give someone a ring. Make a memorial. Because, if you decide to change, you can make 2023 a year to remember. And setting up a standing stone will help you remember it.