November 10 is marked in the almanac, in large type, as “World Youth Day.”
China’s Youth Day is May 4, obviously commemorating the May Fourth Movement. So where did World Youth Day come from? I looked it up online and found nothing but “a Catholic religious gathering founded by Pope John Paul II in 1984.” “This festival was created to reverse the tendency of young people with Catholic faith to drift away from the Church.”
But this Youth Day is not the one we mean today. With just a little careful looking, one can tell that this Catholic gathering is actually held at different times every year, and there is no mention at all of November 10.
Also widely circulating online is a full-year calendar of festivals, in which World Youth Day on November 10 is marked with the starting year 1946. But because information circulating on the internet often does not cite its sources, and because vast quantities of completely repeated information drown out whatever other possibly existing information there may be, the origin of this festival is almost impossible to trace through the network. Alas, the internet—something on which even a fallacy that could be exposed with just a bit of verification can spread in huge quantities, while true and rigorous things are instead buried alive—has countless such examples…
There are quite a few people born in the first half of November, and there are a good many among my middle-school and university classmates. I once heard one explanation: think back to late January and early February, when spring is warm and flowers are blooming and there are festivals too—a good season for getting married, honeymooning, and so on. If something happens then, wouldn’t ten months later be just about this time in November…? It actually sounds rather plausible.
Still, there aren’t many famous people whose birthdays fall today. The most famous is probably the German Reformation leader Martin Luther, born on November 10, 1483.
Compared with Protestantism, I still have a slight preference for Catholicism. Protestantism does not necessarily live up to its name as something “new”; it certainly did resist the authority of the Church, but by toppling the Church it also made itself more fragmented, and freedom can easily deteriorate into license. For example, I feel that as long as conditions permit, a courtroom should still be made into a dignified building, rather than into an open-air market for haggling. This society needs a proper degree of “solemnity.” If these “solemn” places are exploited by secular or utilitarian power, that is of course a bad thing, but to overthrow them completely seems like overcorrecting the problem. Of course, this is entirely a matter of personal preference, perhaps related to the fondness I had for that Catholic church that accompanied me for four years of elementary school.
I regard Luther, as a “reformer,” with respect, but without any special affection (and of course with no aversion whatsoever). But as for Martin Luther as a “theologian” or as a “believer,” I still have considerable liking for him. Although I know very little about him, this one sentence of his is enough to move me:
—“Even if I knew the world would shatter tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today.”
Happy birthday!
November 10, 2006
Bifengtang
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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