Dear
Friends,
Be Well.
David
January 1st is Not the Start of the “True” New Year
We live in an age where is timekeeping has become an assumed background condition that we do not question. Yet nothing regulates our lives as much as the clock and calendar do. They tell us when we are supposed to work, rest, worship, celebrate and play. So let us begin with questioning with the purported start of the Euro-western New Year.
But first lets define what is meant by a year. A year according to the dictionary is a period of time measuring 12 months or 365 days long. More precisely a year is atemporal cycle measuring the Earth’s orbit around the Sun in said periods of smaller cycles—days and months.
And what is a cycle but a process that repeats. So a year is a temporal cycle of specified duration that repeats—so far so good. The question for us is how do we determine the criteria for the start of the solar cycle. That question is not that easy to answer once you realize that a cycle is a circle and its impossible to determine where a circle starts or ends.
Fortunately for us perfect seamless circles are extremely rare in nature. Stars and planets are not perfectly spherical for they bulge around their midsections. And planetary orbits are not perfect circles either rather they are elliptical or ovoid like an egg. As such the Earth is nearest the Sun on January third and furthest away on July 4.
The following excerpt from another article of mine entitled In Search of a Universal New Year: In Honor of August 13th or the Day the World was Born provides us with the criteria that various cultures have used or still use to determine the start of the year cycle.
Presently there is no universal basis for what qualifies the start of a new year. Every culture seems to have its own set of regional parameters for determining the start of the new year. The Chinese celebrate theirs in either late January or early February according their lunar calendar.The ancient Egyptians linked the appearance of the star Sirius and the annual flooding of the Nile river in the month of July to signal the start of their new year. The Egyptian new year starts 1 month after the summer solstice. The many cultures of India celebrate the new year on various dates during the month of April or within one month of the spring equinox.Europe’s Nordic cultures keyed theirs to the winter solstice. The Celtic, Samhain, now vulgarized as Halloween, is celebrated by present day neopagans, Wiccans and Druids as the start of their new year.The Maori of New Zealand looked for the appearance of the Pleiades in May to signal the start of the new year. The Hawaiians also pegged their new year to the appearance of the Pleiades, but their new year fell in October. The Aztec-Mexicas celebrated the new year in early March several days before the spring equinox.And then there is Gregorian January first to mark the start of the new year for Euro-westerners. The Gregorian calendar inherited January 1st from the Roman Julian calendar. The Romans marked January first as the new year in order to honor Julius Caesar’s exploit as the founder of the “rational calendar”. Contrast the Roman criteria with the fact that the new year of all other cultures is related to some seasonal and/or astronomical aspect. The foregoing is why I refer to the Gregorian calendar as an urban calendar for it reflects the whims of the city lords more than anything else.The most common denominator for the start of the new year in most other calendrical systems is the start of the growing season or end of the harvest. In some cases, either the solstices or equinoxes are recognized as the start of the year. The start of the new year for cultures other than the Euro-western is more often than naught related to the agricultural, seasonal and astronomical particulars of their respective region.Many pre-Christian cultures of Europe’s northern hemispheric latitudes recognized thewinter solstice as the start of the new year as the sun symbolically dies and is reborn on that day.The start of the new year cycle can be viewed as universal for those in the northern hemisphere when reckoned from the winter solstice, and as defined by the atmospheric changes (rain, dryness, snow,) that accompany the gradual increase and decrease in ambient air temperature as the sun ascends and descends respectively. The same would apply to those of the southern hemisphere except that their new year would start with the summer solstice.The process of cooling and warming is minimized in most parts of the tropical regions. The most defining aspect of seasonal variation in the tropics is dry and rainy seasons. Nonetheless it is the sun’s to and fro movement, and its attendant affect on atmospheric conditions that drives precipitation patterns. Therefore we can safely equate the start of the new year with each hemisphere’s ascendant solstice, for it is the ascendant sun that initiates the life cycle for either hemisphere.
Thus it is the ascendant solstices that provide us with the fixed and natural starting points for each hemisphere’s respective new year as it relates to the initiation of the life cycle. Even so some cultures will focus on the particular seasonal markers of their region to signal the start the new year. Whatever the case the defining parameter for non Euro-western cultures is the start of the life cycle as it progresses from seed/bloom to harvest or from the general increase in the availability of food sources.
There is nothing to distinguish January 1st as the start of the year cycle. It is the solstices and equinoxes that provide us with the most telling and universal markers of the year cycle. And then it is the ascendant solstice for each hemisphere that initiates the all important and supremely significant life cycle.
Belated New Year wishes to all of you in the Northern Hemisphere!!
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