Another Happy New Year

I'm a big fan of nice, round numbers and order, but that puts me at odds with the part of the universe that isn't made up of humans, which is to say most of it.

Today is New Years day in most of the world. This is a day heavily laden with moment and meaning, but I'm not sure exactly why it's today. It's not that I object to January being the first month, but it feels pretty arbitrary to have the new year begin right now.

People, being what we are, have probably always counted days. Well, they're pretty noticeable, what with the sun rising and each one separated from the rest with all that night time and cooler temperatures. And, I suspect that it didn't take us too long to notice that days get longer or shorter, that leaves change into beautiful colors before falling off some of the trees, and that snow shows up. Early humans, I'm thinking, when they weren't busy trying just to survive, must have noticed these things and ended up thinking in terms of years.

Days are easy to figure out, years are pretty obvious, but weeks are entirely made up.

The thing is, though, that January first isn't anything special. If we're not going to say a year begins with something sensible, like being the shortest one, the longest one, or one of the two that have equal daylight and night time, we're pretty much down to just picking one at random and saying “It starts now.”

I could even accept a year beginning on some momentous, special day, even something as meager as the birthday of the guy who came up with this silly calendar with its leap years and weird structure. Sadly, though, as near as I can figure out, January first simply is, and that's all there is to it.

The thing is, no matter how much I may want it, one year isn't a nice round number of days that we can sensibly divide up. We have to take the world for what it is and attempt to make it fit some ideal we have, and what we have now just barely works. There are people trying to come up with better calendars with leap weeks every several years instead of leap days every fourth, but I'm afraid even that Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar still has the year starting on a day we wouldn't look twice at if it weren't just for some lucky placement.