A Frosty New Year

 

Happy New Year! This morning when I woke up there was frost all over everything and it continued to be insanely cold all day. And I kept asking myself why the powers that were chose to change the year in the middle of winter. Now I am sure there is an actual academic answer to the question but I am not particularly interested in it at the moment. I can look it up if I get truly curious.

I know why Christmas is celebrated in the winter and it makes sense to me but why the new year? Isn't technically every day a new year? I figure that it must have something to do with the need to look forward to something, celebrate something in the dead of winter. It's dark, it's cold, it feels as if the spring will never come. Maybe to trick ourselves into not giving up hope they decided that if they changed the said it was the beginning of the new year people would feel the hope of the coming spring. It's a new year, things will get better.

It makes me think of that Christmas song, In the Bleak Midwinter. Simply because it's the middle of winter and bleak, let's celebrate something.  And perhaps the reason they put it so close to Christmas is that they wanted to extend the holiday to actually have a full twelve days, but as Bob and Doug pointed out the math would have to involve some mystery days.  Then again maybe it is just to fabricate a reason to keep stuffing ourselves.  Whatever the reason it is nice to be able to celebrate so much in the bleak midwinter.