Fall Hunter Moon
The ten days of awe have ended, the book of life has been sealed. The year 5777 is well underway. In case you wondered, as I did, when the Jewish calendar began, it’s with creation. There are apparently fudges about the first six days and their length. One, for example, says the first four days could not have been 24 hours because the sun had not yet been created.
Anyhow, it’s similar to Bishop Ussher’s famous calculations in the Christian tradition. He estimated the age of the earth by counting generations from the 7th day of creation. “By Ussher’s calculations, we are now set to enter the year 6020: 4004 plus 2016. This is very close to Jewish tradition, which puts us in the year 5777.” Globe and Mail
We slide now into ordinary time until, that is, the next holiday. Which on the Jewish calendar is Sukkot, or the feast of the booths.
I now celebrate several distinct new years. The Jewish new year, just over, comes not long before the Celtic new year which begins on Samain eve, or All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween. The next one is the Western calendrical new year on January 1st and that is followed by the lunar Asian new year, which comes sometime in February. That’s at least four opportunities to assess the old year and make plans for the new one.
This fall season will end on Samain, the third of the three harvest holidays: Lughnasa, Mabon and Samain. The Celts began their new year with the end of the growing season, a last fruit’s festival, one marking the beginning of the fallow time. I like the specifically seasonal emphasis of Samain, tying the new year not to dogma or tradition or an arbitrary date like January 1, but to the cycle of life on earth, a cycle influenced by the sun.
Each of these new years has its own flavor, it’s own thing to commend it. A good deal, really, all these variations.
