AngryAndrew’s New Year’s Resolution
AngryAndrew Discusses New Year’s Day, Resolutions, Solstices, Ancient Civilizations, and… Fluffy Bunnies?
“Happy New Year” I say in my most sarcastic tone, hoping to break free from the ne’er-do-well that is vying for my attention so they can tell me about the rabbit-fur gloves they got for Christmas. I pretend not to hear them when they ask what my “resolution” is as I make my way past the half-eaten bean dip in search of what remains of flavored and/or bubbly ethanol.
Nevertheless, if you’ve devoted the effort to click and get here to see what kind of resolution I might make, I suppose I should reward your effort:
I Resolve To Focus…
(see what I did there?)
My New Years Resolution is… Not to waste my life with pointless resolutions made on an arbitrary day. If I identify something needing change in my life, I’m not going to wait till one-day-out-of-the-year comes around to do it, mainly because it never works out ANYWAY.
Look at me, last year I resolved to be a kinder, gentler Andrew. If I’m gentler it’s only because arthritis is keeping me from strangling my former-self for making such a ridiculous “resolution” on an arbitrary day called January first, a day that does not align with any significant astrological occurrence.
Why is our Gregorian calendar set so that the new year is 10 days past the solstice? And 2 to 3 days before perihelion? Julius Caesar had a chance to fix it in 44 BC, and Pope Gregory had chance to fix it AGAIN in the 1580s. They even had astronomers who knew when the damn solstice was.
CAN’T ANYONE COUNT?
It’s not like you have to count high. If you set the 1st of the month, also known as day one, to coincide with the day of the solstice, that means you only have to count to… ONE. Julius and the Pope made it a count to ten. Why? Didn’t they have anything else to do with their fingers?
As a result, all solstices and equinoxes are off about 10 days before the next even monthly boundary (i.e. the first, where they should be). Any reasonable person (or at least any person with OCD such as myself) would consider the first day of the month to be a great day to set the solstices and equinoxes. January 1st: winter solstice, April 1st: equinox, July 1st: summer solstice. Caesar should be happy about starting summer on his month, right?
I’d Kill for a Calendar…
Well the Mayans did, with their ritual sacrifices to the “gods” of those who won athletic competitions. At least they knew how to start their annual calendar on the day immediately after the solstice. On the other hand the Mayan calendar was so complicated it was actually a set of three calendar systems using complicated maths.
But of course, the Mayan civilization is long gone. I suppose that can happen when you take the very best of your adolescents and slaughter them as sacrifices to MagicalSkyPeople™, thus eliminating the very best DNA from the gene pool. Mayans: Good at math; Public policy, not so much.
Of course I’m not even going to get started on the ethnocentric aspects of the Gregorian calendar, when a dozen other cultures (including all of CHINA) use a completely different new year and calendar all together. China may use the western Gregorian calendar for some things such as business, but Chinese holidays are on the traditional Chinese calendar which celebrates a lunar new year (technically it is a “Lunisolar” or “Solilunar” calendar).
Lunacy Year
So here’s a fun fact about the Chinese Lunar New Year: every year it’s on a different Gregorian day and date. Why make things easy when you can make it a train wreck of complications?
Having their New Years in February, and on a different day each time confuses everyone in the west, most especially me, who happens to be born in a year that most people say is year of the DRAGON…
AWESOME! I’m a Dragon! Fire breathing! It goes well with the “AngryAndrew” narrative and all that!
But no, I discovered that I’m NOT a ‘Dragon’
I’m actually born on the last day of the RABBIT, the day before Dragon in February, which I just now discovered while researching calendar crap for this article. No, I am not the angry, fire-breathing Dragon I had been told and believed I was all these years. I’m a FLUFFY FUCKING BUNNY. Well, I guess this satisfies my resolution of last year to be “Kinder, Gentler.”
Meanwhile Iran & several other cultures use the spring equinox, (or a close proximity) for their new year. This seems sensible, spring always feels like the start of a new year. I suppose as a newly realized rabbit I should like that, hopping carefree in the spring fields just before the Persians chop me up and turn me into bunny-kabobs with a side of saffron basmati rice, then sell my fur to the glove maker.
And as long as we’re in that part of the world, let’s not forget Islam and Judaism — they have their new year in early October. Why? Obviously because “let’s start the new year at the beginning of the coldest part of the year when everything is dead and hibernating because we need to suffer.” Or something.
But for all these rich, historic cultures, spanning thousands of years, no surviving group of humans can figure out how to start a GOD DAMMED CALENDAR ON A SOLSTICE???
Happy?? #NewYear #Resolutions
— AngryAndrew
