New Year’s Cycle, a Recycled Story

by Arnold De Villa
January 1, 2013
The clock moves towards 12, the last 2 numbers of our current year, soon to turn 13. Channels surf as we watch the routinary parties from different parts of the city, this country and around the world. Excitement is both offered and fabricated while hedonistic rituals inspired by toxicating substances push through this nocturnal vigilance. No one wants to go to bed. Meanwhile, the more serious broadcasters feed us with the past highlights of the year that was. Political campaigns, re-elections, natural disasters and irrational massacres seem to have dented the markings of 2012. Some are finicky to say goodbye, others jittery to a new one and some are bored with a bang. Twelve months ago, the scenario was the same. And twelve months later, it will be another déjà vu.
So what is new? And what is old? And how is it that this urban ritual is so entwined in our modern culture when the only palpable difference we see is marked on the last page of the calendar we discard? We will have another birthday, another spring, another summer, and back to another winter, regardless of whatever numbers come before our eyes.
Way back when, when the calendar was different, New Year’s celebration was around March, around the time of a vernal equinox, around 2000 years before the birth of Christ, and around Mesopotamia which was ancient Iraq. As I always thought of, the earliest calendar indicated March 1st as the New Year. It makes sense. February owes an odd number of days as if it were a residual pool for days that exceeded previous months. Winter also ends in February. The months of September, October, November and December have numerical Latin roots that indicate the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th. If December means the 10th, then January and February would logically be the 11th and 12th, making March the beginning of new calendar year. Politics changed that order.
Julius Caesar introduced January as the beginning of the calendar year 46 years before Christ was born. So far, no other world leader had a stronger influence to change that system and we got stuck with it. There was also a time when January 1st was abolished as whimsical rulers moved it to December 25th, making the marked birth of Christ the same day as a new year. It also makes sense. Both BC and AD are calendar date suffixes that indicate Christ’s birth as a point of reference. This took place during the medieval ages, when Christianity was at its peak. Fast forward, 1582; January 1st regained its old official post. The Gregorian calendar persisted. And so we have the New Year.
Back to the screen, clocks tick, crowds dressed in fine garment sway with high decibeled noise disguised as music, we stare at our own clocks. Ten, nine, eight … three, two one….and then it was gone.
And then the cycle starts all over, the old new story begins anew, countdown is reset, old memories are recycled, and redundancies come back. What did you do on December 21st, the alleged Mayan calendar pronouncement of the end of the world? It was so insignificant that I did not even remember what I had for breakfast. People passed away that day. The world did not end with them. Babies were also born. The world did not begin.
Every year, the variances of human routine, the rituals of desired expectations and hope, are manifested through a repeat performance of a new year’s celebration. We are indeed creatures of habit and it would seem cynical to propose that perhaps for a change, it could be good that we all let the New Year’s Day pass as if nothing new transpired. No countdowns, no parties, no extra special news reports, no waiting for midnight. For what reason? To prove that the novelty of a new year is only new because we desire it to be so. The significance of days that pass establishes their meaning upon the significance that we give them. The zeal of a new hope is a zeal that we can always bring at any time when we want to. That special new year’s excitement is something that we created, unfortunately tampered by so many because of sheer commercial purposes. There is a reason to party and it is not because of booze or because of tradition or because of anything else. The only true reason is that our lease on life has been markedly renewed.
You will be reading this piece past New Year’s Day. Every day that you will have from now on will be new. Every second of a 24-hour day will depend on the meaning you give it. Even if the world ends or it does not, we all have a new year’s day. If politics and history have marked time within the confines of a calendar, we too can mark our own time within the freedom of our own lives. Countdowns, if it is not utilized to budget efficiency or to record a certain order, is such a ridiculous New Year’s Day ritual. Did you honestly sense something different when you did it?
Our life, although a recycled bundle of memories and tales, has been given to us as a gift and not as a mere element of calendar days. As a gift, every time we do not die, we get a new lease, a new chance to use this gift. Our expiration date has not yet arrived. When we forget about the implied renewal, we forget that hope is a built in tool always available for the taking.
True, the year that was is marked with highlights. And so is your life. The better news is we always have a chance to add a new highlight to our lives anytime we want to, whenever we want to and however we please. Television networks are not needed to do that. And countdowns are totally irrelevant.
Here is a new proposal. Get your calendars. Fill it up with events related to what you want to be. Mark the days to have the things you have desired to own and then shade those days when you would finally do everything you have put off for so long. The next step would be logically to do something, but then that is not too easy. I leave that step for you to figure out.
365 days are ahead of us after New Year’s Day. But as I write, I have more than 3 million seconds ahead of me and more than five hundred thousand minutes. You have the same numbers. And even if I have never won the lotto, I think those numbers indicate abundance, the abundance of life, a newly recycled story. Enjoy the rest of your Year!