In warfare, timing can be everything. Gaining the advantage by a surprise attack is an important part of any military strategy. In the mentality of ancient warfare, making timely use of the religious meanings and symbolic powers associated with certain days of the year was even more so. We don’t know for sure, but it would seem likely that New Year’s day held some special significance in Lamanite or Zoramite culture.
New Year’s Day is not particularly meaningful to people today, but this was not so in ancient and premodern civilizations. Then, New Year’s Day was largely about the celebration and observance of such critical values and institutions as kingship, covenant renewal, the regeneration of the world and of the political order, the driving out of evil, and the reestablishment of correct leadership and goodness in the land. Much has been written about the year-rite in a wide variety of ancient cultures.
For example, the classic work by James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore, first published in 1890, reports that in some places “a king was put to death at the end of a year’s reign, and a new king appointed” in his place (1.225–26). Sometimes a temporary king or a pretender to the throne might sit on the throne for a few days, and then the real king would return and depose or even kill the phony king (1.228–34). On New Year’s Day in many cultures, special steps were taken in various ways to drive out evil and to protect the land from disease or misfortune by animal or substitutionary sacrifices (2.193–94).
In ancient Israel, the New Year, or Rosh Hoshanah, was the time of formal coronation of kings, the renewal of kingship, and the determination of destiny. The king’s restoration to the throne during this year-rite festival symbolized his continuing ability to stabilize the society and the elements of nature. If the Lamanites had in any way adopted any such commonly held beliefs, would not those expectations or superstitions have had a powerful effect on the Lamanite soldiers when they found their king dead on the morning of the very day when he would have been expected to reassert his rightful role as king and to drive evil out and to give assurances of good fortune?
Did the Lamanites at that point even know who had killed their king? The text says nothing about whose javelin was used. Maybe Teancum used Amalickiah’s own royal weapon, which would have made his people wonder even more who had done it. All that uncertainty would only have added to their sense of calamity upon seeing a javelin stuck into King Amalickiah’s heart. In sum, the total effect on the Lamanite army was sudden and powerful. Knowing that their king was dead, they immediately fell into fear and disarray. “They were affrighted and abandoned their design in marching into the land northward, and retreated with all their army into the city of Mulek, and sought protection in their fortifications” (Alma 52:2).
Teancum’s actions could have appeared bold and courageous on any night, but his timing on New Year’s Eve would have been completely astounding. His timing more than explains the ensuing fear and abrupt retreat of the entire Lamanite army. Having wrung out the evil past, he rang in a propitious new beginning.
Robert F. Smith and Stephen D. Ricks, “New Year’s Celebrations,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 209.