HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year!

Huh? It’s September? 

I am again reminding everyone that one does not have to wait for January 1 to start a new year, turn a new page, start organizing.  Every day is the start of a new year.

When I was a child my year started in September.  School started then - a new school year.  The new TV shows came on for the year (later this became the start of the fall season) - a new TV year.  And in either September or October, being Jewish, it was the religious new year also - the anniversary of the beginning of the world we were told..  The January 1 new year always seemed lacking in reason to me - what was starting anew - just the newly printed calendars.

It is a bit arbitrary.  The new year used to start on March 25 - talk about crazy, Could you imagine March 24, 2018 being followed by March 25, 2019?  This change of year changed at various dates in various places based on the religion practiced in the area starting in 1582.  In the British countries, including their colonies here in America, the change to January 1 as the start of the new year was made in 1750.  (And this led to all sorts of problems as there was also an adjustment to the calendar of 11 days at the time to correct errors in the prior adjustments by leap year days. If you were born on April 10, 1720 O.S. (old style), you would change your birthday to April 21, 1720 for example.)   

The Lunar New Year is in February.  The Muslim New Year occurs at a different time each year in the common (western) calendar although it falls on the same day of the Muslim calendar.  It will vary over the entire year over time.  (The common calendar is a solar calendar- it is based on the travel of the earth around the sun and how long it takes.  The use of the different number of days in various months and leap year day keep the common calendar set more or less fixed against the seasons of the year.  While there are a number of lunar calendars ( based on the length of the months at about 29 days in the time it takes the moon to travel around the earth), some of them will insert a leap year adjustment of some sort - in the Jewish calendar it is an extra month added a number of times over a cycle of years - the Muslim calendar does not add an extra month to adjust for the solar year and so its holidays move through the year over a period of years as there is an 11 day difference in the length of the year.)

Okay, now we are getting religion classes and history lessons.  Back then people had less stuff to deal with and could keep it better organized.  What is going on?

What I am saying (and I have posted similar in the past) is that the day we consider to be the golden time to start organizing (or doing something else) is a fairly arbitrary day.  If today is September 5 - it will be a year until the next September 5, so it is also the start of a new year.

Make sense (I hope)?

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

Since every day is the start of a new year, do not put off starting or doing something until January 1.  Start NOW!  Okay, maybe today is too soon, pick a day soon and start THEN!  No more procrastination.  No more New Year's resolutions left uncompleted.  Pick one thing, just one thing and do it.  Then do something else - one thing at time adds up.