I could get behind a spring new year. Celebrating a new year during the season when the world is in a deep slumber never sat right with me. Spring is my least liked season but what better time to celebrate the cycle beginning anew
Quality post. Just looking at it from nature’s point of view it is absolutely true. Everything is “dead” in the wintertime. Life starts again in spring. Then it really gets going in summer. Starts to slow down in Fall. And “dead” again in winter. Why would you ever start anything in a dead season? Maybe those New Years resolutions would go better if they started in March.
I reckon the logic in the year starting around the winter solstice, is the same as the (24-hour) day starting at midnight - since noon is considered mid-day. And vice versa - if a day begins at dawn, it makes sense for the year to begin in spring, rather than the middle of winter.
Personally, ayh think either way works. The Chinese already celebrate their spring as the start of the new year, even if it falls on late January / early February under their lunisolar calendar.
Though if we can be pedantic, here's a puzzle - why does the "new" moon in a lunar/lunisolar calendar begin at the time when the moon is at its darkest, as opposed to when it's begun to wax? After all, if a day begins at dawn, and a year begins at spring, it makes sense for the new moon to begin at waxing crescent as well, or even at half-full. It just goes to show that calendar definitions can be arbitrary and inconsistent, even on the best of days.
To be fair, the very fact that both "spring" and the "winter" solstice vary between hemispheres, is already arbitrary enough. At least the moon is in the same phase for the whole world at any given time. Meanwhile, as others said, the Earth is closest to the sun around early January, which is as good a reason as any to start the year then.
I honesty don't know, why the "ayh"?
maybe lmao
I could get behind a spring new year. Celebrating a new year during the season when the world is in a deep slumber never sat right with me. Spring is my least liked season but what better time to celebrate the cycle beginning anew
Quality post. Just looking at it from nature’s point of view it is absolutely true. Everything is “dead” in the wintertime. Life starts again in spring. Then it really gets going in summer. Starts to slow down in Fall. And “dead” again in winter. Why would you ever start anything in a dead season? Maybe those New Years resolutions would go better if they started in March.
I've come to love you and tolerate you.
January is named after Janus a pagan god. Easter is named after Ishtar a pagan god. December 25 is the birthday of Ra the sun god. Sorry not sorry.
I reckon the logic in the year starting around the winter solstice, is the same as the (24-hour) day starting at midnight - since noon is considered mid-day. And vice versa - if a day begins at dawn, it makes sense for the year to begin in spring, rather than the middle of winter.
Personally, ayh think either way works. The Chinese already celebrate their spring as the start of the new year, even if it falls on late January / early February under their lunisolar calendar.
Though if we can be pedantic, here's a puzzle - why does the "new" moon in a lunar/lunisolar calendar begin at the time when the moon is at its darkest, as opposed to when it's begun to wax? After all, if a day begins at dawn, and a year begins at spring, it makes sense for the new moon to begin at waxing crescent as well, or even at half-full. It just goes to show that calendar definitions can be arbitrary and inconsistent, even on the best of days.
To be fair, the very fact that both "spring" and the "winter" solstice vary between hemispheres, is already arbitrary enough. At least the moon is in the same phase for the whole world at any given time. Meanwhile, as others said, the Earth is closest to the sun around early January, which is as good a reason as any to start the year then.