HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE

If people look at Christians and think us odd for the celebration we undertake marking things they site as mythical at best, I say equally as strange is this whole idea of New Years. What is New Years after all? Why should a new year begin on January 1st? You’d think that it would start on an equinox, perhaps the spring one as the world begins to enter into new life – well – that is – if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere.

For that matter, why start a day at midnight? Not everyone does. Why not have at, say, 8:00? Then we could toast the New Year with champagne along with the desert course at dinner and then go promptly to bed before we do anything we regret like the gentleman at the gathering I was at last year – and - well, that’s another story. I just hope he got some help.

Of course, much of the world does not follow our calendar and does not mark January 1st as the beginning of anything, let alone being January or the 1st. In fact, even we admit that we are not quite sure that calendar is quite on. Give or take three years we say. Not even our liturgical calendar quite matches up with this. (Is it not interesting though as we discovered earlier this year that whatever calendar we should adopt it is of our Tradition that a week must contain seven days?)



Time becomes very relative when speaking with someone who just doesn’t get it. No, I’m not talking about your sister who can’t seem to show up for anything on time, more like my Dad who, in the depths of Alzheimer’s has completely lost the gist of time. Day/night, month/year, breakfast/dinner time, he simply smiles and says, “Huh, what do you know?” (Though for some odd reason he still loves his watch.)

What if we were able to inhabit another planet? What would happen to the marking of years or hours? How would we communicate? (Maybe we would have to start a star date like on Star Trek.) One would have to figure out what relationship one’s own time zone is to that of one on a different planet whose days might be longer or shorter. “What time is it there? 2:00 am? I thought it was noon. Oh, that was last month you say.”

What if they got to celebrate Christmas more often than we do because their planet travels around the (a) sun more quickly? Kids would cry that it was unfair that their cousins got to live on planet X because they got presents twice as often as they did. Or what if the planet just kind of glided through space? What would be used to mark (or would there even be) days?

There are too many holidays right now anyway. It would be nice to spread them out a little bit more. We could use a bigger party in February. Things tend to get a little ouchy just then when you are housebound because of the snow.

Just the same, I am pleased to wish you a very blessed arbitrary marking of the passing of an artificial construct of convenience and pray that you may enjoy many more of them or of the alternate particular construct you might be observing from the various options from around the world (or other planetary or otherwise systems).

I wonder if in keeping with diversity and the ever expanding world economy that greeting will ever become popular in the retail world?