Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice
The new year. An interesting idea, if you to stop to consider it. In those parts of the world like ours, the temperate zone that runs in the middle latitudes between the poles (generally), we have more or less four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Even those distinctions are arbitrary, a fact proved by the concept of meteorological spring, summer, autumn and winter which divide the year in four parts by average temperature. They do not coincide with customary dates like May, September, December, March.
Instead, even in the temperate zones, the earth’s position relative to the sun changes gradually, modulating the amount of solar energy any given square meter of surface receives and thereby modulating heat and cold. This gradual change has its peaks and valleys and because plants have adapted their life cycles to this gradual change we celebrate, with plant life as a proxy for the astronomical, seasons.
The seasons relate to the status of the plant world. Right now, plant life is in a fallow time, made necessary by limited sun light and rapidly varying temperatures very often below the freezing point of water. So we turn away from the agricultural and the horticultural to our life inside our dens. Later, as the solar energy available increases, the plants will begin to appear from their winter safety and we will engage them again.
When in this cycle does the new year begin? Take your pick. The Celts, somewhat counter-intuitively for us today, said the New Year began at the growing season’s final moment, Summer’s End or Samhain. Many cultures, the Chinese still and European culture until the 18th century, saw the beginning of a new year in the quickening of the plant world or the signs that it would happen soon.
Whatever cues you take from the plant world, January 1st is an outlier. It has no obvious astronomical or horticultural logic, no roots in culture other than, it appears, the Roman pantheon of Julius Caesar’s day. He was, you might recall, the one who created the modern calender now in use globally. The Gregorian modification to the Julian calendar made the calendar work with the slightly more than 365 day year we get from our journey around the sun.
But it was Caesar who decreed that January, named after the god Janus who famously looked backwards and forwards, was the logical time for the change of a year. Logical only in Caesar’s mind, but even today the Roman dictator still has his way with the world.
As this article in Wikipedia shows, you can celebrate New Year’s at several points throughout the year, so, I guess, today’s as good any of those. Happy New Year! For now.
