I Resolve to Continue
Posted on | December 29, 2011 | 1 Comment
The day in which we choose to celebrate the new year, here in the west, is almost completely arbitrary. There are no actual events in the heavens or on the earth that it commemorates, nothing celestial or secular. It is not an equinox or a solstice. Not the first day of spring or winter. It doesn’t even sit exactly in the middle of any one season, but happens somewhere in the first part of the first third of one of them. No great religious, philosophic or political leader was born on that day, unless you count someone like an important leader. (Okay, there were also some Popes and artists born on that day, but well after we had decided it was the beginning of the new year.) It’s not even the day the swallows come back to Capistrano.
The closest I can come to an explanation of how it was chosen was that it was the Eastern Orthodox Feast of Circumcision. According to the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Christ was circumcised eight days after his birth and named Jesus on that day. This, of course, assumes He was actually born on December 25th, an assumption about which there is much debate among both Christian and secular scholars, since there is very little indication whatsoever in the Bible as to the actual date. Many place it some time in September, when shepherds actually did “abide in the field”, before it got too cold to do so. It also should be noted that, on different calendars, the Feast of Circumcision was celebrated anywhere form what is now January 1st to the what is now January 14th.
That all being said, we do hold the beginning of the new year on January 1st. It has become a symbol of the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, and symbols are important to the existence of societies. We often use this symbolic time to reflect on the previous 365 days and make “resolutions” about what we will change in the upcoming 365. I stopped making these resolutions years ago because 1) they seemed sort of silly and 2) I know of no one in my personal circle of acquaintances who ever kept one much past January 15th.
I do think that taking stock of what has transpired can be a powerful exercise, however, and any time is a good time to do it. In taking stock, it might be effective to see what didn’t work and find ways to do less of that and see what did work, and find ways to do more of that. That is why, this year, I will make a New Year’s Resolution: I resolve to continue what works. The fact the beginning of the new year is sort of stuck in there on a completely inauspicious day in a completely inauspicious time of year might even be a benefit for that kind of resolution. One day just leads from the previous into the next, and I will continue to do what I do to fill my days with the contemplation, tasks and creativity that enhances my life and the lives of those around me.
So, this year, on January 1st, I wish you all a happy and prosperous Feast of Circumcision and may the coming 365 days be filled with joy and productivity.
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January 4th, 2012 @ 4:37 pm
[...] week I wrote a post on our other blog about how arbitrary the actual date for the new year was in our Western culture. As true as that [...]