File this under content that might be scribbled onto a rock with a burnt stick if I ever find myself alone on a deserted island.
This spring (I’m talking Q1 2023), I noticed more than ever before that the year doesn’t really start on January 1, which is what we have been socially conditioned to call “New Year’s Day.”
In fact, I discovered that the so-called “New Year’s Season” lasts 3.5 months!
No one is talking about this.
When it comes to my list, I restricted myself to New Year’s Days that either I or close friends and family personally celebrate/experience. I’ve also categorized these days as religious, familial, culturally specific, meteorological, and governmental, at least from how I experience them (like, as a person living in the Northern Hemisphere, etc.). If you take a hard look at your own life, you might find more ways that your year starts (Nowruz and Rosh Hashanah are two more examples).
Here are all the ways the year turns over.
- Christmas (familial/religious) – December 25
- New Year’s Day (governmental/cultural) – January 1
- Lunar New Year (cultural) – 1st new moon of the calendar year (in 2023 it was January 22)
- Winter ends (meteorological and lunar) – March 1, or the “vernal (spring) equinox,” when the Sun is exactly above the Equator and day and night are of equal length (in 2023 it was March 20, but it is always March 19-21)
- Lent to Easter (religious) – 1st Sunday after the full moon (the “Paschal Full Moon”) that lands on or just after the spring equinox (in 2023 Ash Wednesday was February 22 and Easter was April 9)
- Filing your taxes for the previous year (financial/governmental) – April 15 (in 2023 this has been moved due to the weekend and a holiday to April 18).
This is huge news and probably comes as a relief to many. If you haven’t yet figured out what you’re doing this year, you have until April 19 until 2023 actually starts. After that, I don’t know what to tell you.
Barry Eitel 