On the eighth day of Christmas, the Infant King shed His first blood in the Feast of the Circumcision—a not-so-ancient Catholic feast that calls us amidst the theater of politics and entertainment, little by little, back to repentance, detachment, and the sacramental life.

“At that time after eight days were accomplished, that the Child should be circumcised, His name was called Jesus, which was called by the angel before He was conceived in the womb” (Lk II.21).

Eight days.

The modern American mind hears “week after Christmas” and thinks parties, New Year’s resolutions, and more eating and drinking. But heaven does not bend to our carnal dictates. What heaven does is perennial, and it doesn’t go away for the winter.

On the eighth day inside the lost beauty of the Christmas Octave, the Infant King submits himself to the law he authored. He is stainless, and yet he consents to come into the world of sin. He enters, deliberately, into the wounds of a people set in a perpetual cycle of rebelling against God and returning to him with half-hearted promises. He steps into the family line he came to redeem and allows his tiny flesh to be cut, not because he must, but because he wills to belong.

And in doing so, he sheds blood – the first blood of Christ. It isn’t dramatic like a coronation, not public on a throne, not watched by crowds or elites in celebration. It is just a quiet, holy incision in the hidden life of the Holy Family, a small red mark that denotes the pivot point in human history – and points forward to the time when this little baby will die for our salvation.

That’s why older Catholic calendars once held our “New Year’s Day” inside the Octave of Christmas as the Feast of the Circumcision. The world loves to start its year with firebombs and boastfulness. The Church, in her older instinct, started the year with a drop of blood and a baby.

Not a vain resolution. Not a party vibe. A name given “before he was conceived” – a name that means “God saves.” And he does not save by sentiment or feelings.

He saves by blood.

So if the year begins with the first wound of Christ, perhaps our resolutions should begin there too: not with self-improvement theater, but with repentance, gratitude, and a real return to the sacramental life that actually heals. It is the most sincere charity we can offer each other in this most wonderful time of the year – the gift of knowledge as to how things once were and could be again.

It is fine to follow the politics, to watch the hearings and the headlines and the chessboard moves of men. For a long time I used it to push myself toward a deeper faith in Christ, and in a different way now, still do. This Christmas season, ask Jesus for a rarer gift: detachment from the world, and the clear recognition of the theater of it all – the magick that continuously pulls us back in to the memetic energy, keeping us reactive, keeping us starving, keeping us scrolling, and thus giving the monster permission to prey. If we cannot look away, we will never learn to see. And if we never learn to see, we will keep mistaking the glow of the stage lights for truth – while the Infant King quietly offers the only light and revolution that actually lasts: repentance, recollection, and the reign of Christ in the soul.

And if you can’t do it all at once, ask him for just a straw from his manger this season.

Merry seventh day inside the Octave of Christmas, my friends. The goal is heaven, and this is why I write for you.