Arbitrary New Year’s Day
What is the significance of January 1st?
You may think this an obvious question, but have you ever really thought about it? What, specifically, is the point of one arbitrary day among 365? Is there something special about this exact position of the Earth relative to the Sun occupied?
It is not even one exact position, because there is no exact time, thanks to another arbitrary construct, the timezone, and so the monumental occasion of midnight on January 1st is ruled by bureaucratic mandate.
Is January 1st celebrated due to an accomplishment in world history, or the birth of a famous person? Speaking of the latter, let’s address the obvious before going further. Our calendar years are a profession of Anno Domini, The Year of Our Lord, and this current year represents the two thousandth and twenty sixth. All fine and good, but how is the observed celebration of Christ’s birth related to January 1st? December 25th itself is arbitrary; early Christians coincided Christmas at the same time as a pagan Roman festival. Again, where is the meaning, relation, or correlation to January 1st?
In my party pooper mentality, the same which years ago made the case against the practice of astrology, 00:00:00 January 1 is no different from 15:37:20 February 19, 08:02:59 August 8, or 23:00:09 October 30. These are all numbers, ticks on the clock.
If you don’t care for the randomness of my examples, how about simply asking why January 1st instead of any of the other eleven “first” options?
Our calendar originates from Europe and Western Civilization, hence from the Northern Hemisphere. Why then, of nearly all the months, would the first of January, in the dead of Winter, be cause for celebration? Snow and sub-freezing temperatures, with the prospect of more and worse ahead for several more months, is not a time of joyous optimism. Would not, say, April 1st be more aligned (if still arbitrary) in spirit of a new year? April is the start Spring, when the Earth is warming, coming alive again, plants emerging, trees regaining their leaves, a true time for hope and optimism. Make January 1st the Fool’s Day, a gloomy time of year when a good laugh might help.
(Yes, I am well aware of the historical connection between April 1st and January 1st; yet another example of arbitrary fiat changing away from at least some rationale when April 1st began the new calendar year.)
What is the significance of the number 2,461,042? It is today’s date in the standard Julian Date reckoning, which counts the days since January 1st, 4713 years Before Christ.
What is the significance of January 1st, 4713 B.C.? Is it just another arbitrary day? Yes and no, and which one is closer to reality probably depends on your own perspective of the matter.
At the very least, this particular day has an astronomical significance, calculated as being a time when the solar and lunar cycles coincided, along with the Roman taxation period of indiction, a curious and perhaps alien concept to our 21st perspectives. Ultimately though, this is an arbitrary date as well, no different from today’s January 1st, and all past January firsts, and every January 1st still to come.
Annual notations of time are not insignificant. We celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, and days of historical renown. Perhaps the collective human psyche needs a single day of those 365 (and change) to mark another full rotational cycle of our planet achieved, even if 99.9999999% of the world population does not share my point of view on the matter.
Instead of an arbitrary day like January 1st to move our annual time marker forward by one, how about a day which actually means something? I propose May 7th, the anniversary of he first performance of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, commonly referred to as an embodiment of the brotherhood of Man.
