Reflections
December 31st and the year is at an end. These are days for reflection on what has gone before and awaiting what will come in the next year. When I was growing up in Boston my parents and I watched the news on WCVB. There was a Lifestyle commentator and critic who, every December 31st had a tradition. His spot on that evening would always consist of him saying, very fast, brand names of things that had been fashionable the previous year. It lasted less than a minute, and toward the end he would begin to slow down and would end at a normal speed. There were no sentences, simply names. That is the memory I have. A compilation of the year in our daily lives.
But this is an artificial ending. Every day is the end of a year. December 31st is simply the end of the calendar year. And it's only wherever the Gregorian calendar is followed. Yes, it's now a civil calendar and used internationally so that everyone knows what day the other is talking about. Still, there are broad areas in this world where this day is not a day for reflection because it's simply the end of the civil year, but not the end of the year that means something to them.
There wasn't always one major New Year that encompassed most of the known world, either. Each culture tended to have its own calendar. Once upon a time, Greeks celebrated New Year at the winter solstice. The Egyptians celebrated at the fall equinox, and the Persians celebrated on the spring equinox and still do. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, may have origins stretching back to ancient Babylon. It is now the New Year of Iran and most of central Asia. The Chinese also celebrate according to their own calendar, generally in our February, as they have for centuries. Our New Year harks back to the Romans, who first celebrated it at the beginning of March, also close to the spring equinox. But they moved it to January 1st in the year 153 B.C. Though many people still celebrated on March 1st until the Julian calendar came into effect, in 46 B.C., when January 1st officially became New Year's day for the entire Roman world.
However, it hasn't always remained so since then. In the Middle Ages Christian Europe, though still following the Julian calendar, abolished January 1st as the New Year because it was considered pagan. From then on, each princedom and kingdom declared December 25th, March 1st, March 25th (Feast of the Annunciation), or Easter Sunday, to be New Year's day. There was confusion enough. The Council of Tours in 567 A.D. were the ones to abolish January 1st. Another Council of Tours in 755, almost two hundred years later, got together to recommend that Easter Sunday be considered the beginning of the year. But, as it was only a recommendation, when Pope Gregory XIII instituted a new calendar in 1582, January 1st was officially declared New Year's Day for everyone. Except the Protestant countries. Most of them waited until the eighteenth century to adopt the Gregorian calendar, Britain included. So the first colonies of the United States celebrated March 1st as New Year's until the year 1700. And Orthodox Russia didn't adopt it until 1918 when the Bolsheviks took over.
Still, though artificial, it is a day which forces us to sit and take stock of our lives in the past year and figure out where we want them to head in the next year. It has become a point of inflection in our lives. Where did we fail, where did we succeed? What is important and how do we seek it in the future? It's a necessary day for our sanity, a day of contemplation. In this ultra-fast world, faster even than the critic's opening words, it is a moment to sit quietly and think slowly, so that our thoughts reach the speed of normal speech in which we can understand individual words, the same as at the end of the critic's look back at the year that is leaving.
Happy New Year.
But this is an artificial ending. Every day is the end of a year. December 31st is simply the end of the calendar year. And it's only wherever the Gregorian calendar is followed. Yes, it's now a civil calendar and used internationally so that everyone knows what day the other is talking about. Still, there are broad areas in this world where this day is not a day for reflection because it's simply the end of the civil year, but not the end of the year that means something to them.
There wasn't always one major New Year that encompassed most of the known world, either. Each culture tended to have its own calendar. Once upon a time, Greeks celebrated New Year at the winter solstice. The Egyptians celebrated at the fall equinox, and the Persians celebrated on the spring equinox and still do. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, may have origins stretching back to ancient Babylon. It is now the New Year of Iran and most of central Asia. The Chinese also celebrate according to their own calendar, generally in our February, as they have for centuries. Our New Year harks back to the Romans, who first celebrated it at the beginning of March, also close to the spring equinox. But they moved it to January 1st in the year 153 B.C. Though many people still celebrated on March 1st until the Julian calendar came into effect, in 46 B.C., when January 1st officially became New Year's day for the entire Roman world.
However, it hasn't always remained so since then. In the Middle Ages Christian Europe, though still following the Julian calendar, abolished January 1st as the New Year because it was considered pagan. From then on, each princedom and kingdom declared December 25th, March 1st, March 25th (Feast of the Annunciation), or Easter Sunday, to be New Year's day. There was confusion enough. The Council of Tours in 567 A.D. were the ones to abolish January 1st. Another Council of Tours in 755, almost two hundred years later, got together to recommend that Easter Sunday be considered the beginning of the year. But, as it was only a recommendation, when Pope Gregory XIII instituted a new calendar in 1582, January 1st was officially declared New Year's Day for everyone. Except the Protestant countries. Most of them waited until the eighteenth century to adopt the Gregorian calendar, Britain included. So the first colonies of the United States celebrated March 1st as New Year's until the year 1700. And Orthodox Russia didn't adopt it until 1918 when the Bolsheviks took over.
Still, though artificial, it is a day which forces us to sit and take stock of our lives in the past year and figure out where we want them to head in the next year. It has become a point of inflection in our lives. Where did we fail, where did we succeed? What is important and how do we seek it in the future? It's a necessary day for our sanity, a day of contemplation. In this ultra-fast world, faster even than the critic's opening words, it is a moment to sit quietly and think slowly, so that our thoughts reach the speed of normal speech in which we can understand individual words, the same as at the end of the critic's look back at the year that is leaving.
Happy New Year.
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