It's Not A New Year in My Head

Every year New Year's Eve rolls around and I feel like I should be making resolutions for the new year. I should be turning new leaves and lining up goals. It's what you do. But every year my brain rejects such activities. It looks around and says "I don't see anything new about it. It's exactly like the past weeks and no different from the coming weeks." And so and resolutions I had been contemplating easily dissolve into mush simply because I can't keep them in my head.

Honestly, I cannot fathom why the ancient Romans decided to make January 1st the start of the year. Or why everyone else eventually went along with it. To me, Spring has always felt like the Beginning of Things. It only makes sense. How can a year begin when everything around you is dead? And indeed, it was only relatively recently that western civilization adopted the January 1 date. England celebrated it on March 25th until the 1700s. A date in March, near to the vernal equinox, makes a lot more sense to me.

This also appeals to my geeky, Tolkien-obsessed side because in Middle-earth it was established that the Elven year (loa) began on the day before the spring season (Tuile). "Yestarë" (or First Day in Quenya) falls on March 28th on the Gregorian calendar. (Yes, Tolkien even named all the Elven seasons in two languages and established several holidays for them. The man was nothing if not thorough.) So it may be the geekiest thing in the world, but I think this year I'm going to celebrate Yestarë instead of the modern New Year.

Oh, I'll still be writing 2012 on all my documents. But in my heard the new year won't really begin until March 28th. It's a better time for resolutions and big changes, I think. The time when the world is awakening, color is returning, all living things are being born and growing. Until then I'm just going to stick to the goals I've had for the past year: keep on write, write everyday, finish something, self publish it.

Nothing new to see here. But maybe in a few months...