This week: Most (all?) Cultures Celebrate New Year. Edited by: NaNoNette  
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| "New Year’s is a time to cleanse, renew, and rewire to bring in new patterns. Almost every spiritual tradition begins the new year with letting-go rituals in order to make room for the new." ~ Barbara Biziou, Global ritual expert and author of The Joy of Ritual. |
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Most (all?) Cultures Celebrate New Year.
January is almost over! Why is there a newsletter about New Year now? It's too late! We've broken all the resolutions and are ready to move on with real life.
The Western perspective of New Year to be on January 1st is only one of many possible New Years. To illustrate the wide variety of New Years, I am going to use the calendar dates that we use. It will show how January 1st is only one of many. You can capture the feeling to start anew at all different times of the year.
The Umatilla tribes of eastern Oregon hold their ceremony just before the winter solstice on December 20th.
Ethiopian New Year falls on September 11.
Chinese New Year takes place anytime between January 21 and February 20.
Western Australia’s Aboriginal tribe of Murador celebrates New Year’s on October 30.
Sinhalese and Tamil Hindus of Sri Lanka observe New Year in mid-April.
The list goes on, but you get the point.
So what makes New Year so compelling across such diverse an unrelated cultures? Are humans universally addicted to resetting their lives on an arbitrary date and promise to do better from then out?
Maybe.
Truly, we all have a need for some type of mental rejuvenation. We all need hope that there is something that comes next. The next day, the next week, the next year. Celebrating New Year can be part of a religion, but it can also happen in a society that self-describes as secular. So what does the New Year have to do in a Spiritual newsletter? Spirituality is, in the broadest terms, the search for something bigger than the self. Time, the way it jerks us around by running through our fingers, is definitely bigger than anyone of us.
Celebrating New Year's doesn't make time stand still. However, it gives us a fixed point. There is a before and an after. Whether we think of it in positive terms "everything will be better," in pessimistic terms "things will get worse," or regard the whole thing with sarcastic nihilism "it doesn't matter what day it is," we're still drawn to comment in some form. Nobody is unaffected. Clearly, choosing a new calendar book is a powerful, communal ritual that most of us engage in. Even those who have all of their appointments in some digital device end up using some form of tangible calendar. Even if it's the magnetic one your insurance agent sends you in October.
As a fiction writer, you should not overlook New Year's celebrations when coming up with a spiritual system.
What kind of New Year do you celebrate? |
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Replies to my last Spiritual newsletter "Halloween is a Spiritual Festival" that asked Have you been told that Halloween is something unholy, evil, or to be scared of?
Odessa Molinari  wrote: forget the undead etc. It is people (Mainly older teens) who make Halloween scary. Tricks that go too far, demanding with menaces.
You are right that the living are scarier than all the make-believe monsters.
bob county wrote: Going to a stranger's house for candy is scary.
Sometimes, the candy is poisoned.
It's best to keep the party at home with friends.
Bob County
Having a party with friends is a good idea. But not out of fear.
Zeke wrote: Of course for some of us the origin of this holiday was All Hallows Eve when we remember all our lost loved ones.
Zeke
Yes. I think that's kind of what it's supposed to be at its root. Nothing spooky. |
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Spiritual: January 31, 2024 Issue [#12379]
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