New Year Rebel
When I was a teenager living in my parent's home in London, like most British people, we observed New Year's Eve. This was the time when we would go to a party, eat, drink and be merry, and at the stroke of midnight, led by someone on television, we would all wish each other happy new year and sing the traditional New Year song Auld Lang Syne (or at least attempt to sing it as nobody ever seemed to know the words.)
And then one year, my sister and I decided not to go to a party. We stayed home, playing backgammon, and drinking from our parent's drink cabinet.
At midnight when my parents called to wish us a Happy New Year they were shocked to learn that we were at home having a quiet night in.
"But nobody stays home on New Year's Eve?" argued my mother. And the following year, again we stayed home, only this time so as not to stress our party-going parents, we put on loud music and when they called to wish us at midnight we pretended we were having a gathering.
Why did we not go to a New Year's Eve Party? Was it the pressure of choosing which one to go to? Was it post Christmas exhaustion? Or was it the fact that we awkward teenagers had nobody to kiss at midnight?
Every Moment Is A New Beginning
The truth is that New Year's Eve isn't a big deal for me. My school of thought is that every day is a new beginning, every new moon is a time for me to make wishes and resolutions and every birthday is a personal new year that needs to be honored with reflection, celebration and new things in my life.
The Romans observed the new year in late March - spring. Which makes sense as a season of rebirth, planting new crops and blossoming. But their calendar was tampered with by various emperors so that the calender became out of sync with the sun. In order to set the calendar right, the Roman Senate in 150BC, declared January 1st to be the beginning of the new year. Then in the Middle Ages, New Year's Day became officially the 25th December and only four hundred years ago, in the sixteenth century, did January 1st become New Year's Day again.
New Year's Eve Rituals
Of course more often than not I get swept up into the New Year's Eve celebrations. One year I was in the home of some Venezuelan friends and at midnight they started running down the street with empty suitcases in hand, telling me that this was a ritual to ensure that they got to travel in the year ahead.
In Times Square, NYC, I tried to get a glimpse of the dropping of the New Year ball, but the crowd was just too big. And in the Netherlands I warmed myself around bonfires of Christmas trees on the streets, as the fires are meant to purge the old and welcome the new.
On New Year's Day my Dutch friends ate doughnuts…doughnuts are in the shape of a ring and therefore symbolize 'coming full circle.'
Every country seems to have its' rituals for welcoming the New Year. Apparently in Japan 'forget the year parties' are held to say goodbye to the problems of the past year and misunderstandings and grudges are forgiven. At midnight Buddhist temples strike their gongs 108 times in order to expel 108 types of human weaknesses.
And over in Spain the ritual is to eat twelve grapes at midnight in order to secure twelve happy months in the coming year.
Resolutions
The most common worldwide ritual is the making of resolutions. We humans have been making and breaking them since the early Christians. Personally I make no resolutions for the New Year as the habit of working out my life - wishing, planning, saying what I need to give up and what I need to begin, is a daily habit. I tend to agree with the joke that "A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other."
Saying all that, if I do make a resolution on January 1st, I try not to expect too much from myself. Last year I resolved to slowly cut down on smoking and as the end of the year arrives I find myself smoking no more than one cigarette every evening.
When I think about what New Year means to me, especially from a spiritual perspective, I am thankful for this day as a way to experience unity. Poet Charles Lamb put it eloquently when he said "New Year's Day is every man's birthday."
For me it's a wonderful thought that on 31st December most of the world is putting the old year behind them, and looking forward to a new year, new possibilities, new hope and in the words of another poet - Alfred Lord Tennyson - a chance to "Ring out the false, ring in the true."
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