Shouldn’t the New Year Begin in Spring?

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Happy New Year

It’s almost officially spring – may I be the first to wish you a happy New Year?

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It seems strange to me that Jan. 1 – right in the middle of the darkest, chilliest and least joyous of the seasons – marks the beginning of the year.

Who on earth feels like kicking off an entire, freshly made year when there’s snow on the ground, your nose is stopped up and the high point of your week is standing in the returns line at Target?

I know all about Pope Gregory XIII, but anybody with the slightest sense of occasion would never have chosen winter, when the earth is asleep and humans are wishing they’d gotten that flu shot, to launch a new calendar.

Obviously, spring should be the beginning of the year, with an official New Year’s Day somewhere around Easter and Passover.

How about a New Year’s toast with those hard-boiled eggs?

When else is the world as lovely and new as it is right now? The Tennessee hills are cloaked in delicious lime green, signaling that winter doldrums are slipping away. Flowering dogwoods and iris have taken their places right behind pear trees and daffodils in the Easter parade. Red and yellow and purple tulips stand at attention. The birds sing as if their tunes were breath.

And – if you doubt that even Mother Nature can get a little over the top – baby bunnies and tiny squirrels bounce around a lawn silly with dandelions.

This is the season of renewal and rebirth for all of us, whether we celebrate a religious holiday or find inner peace just sitting on the back steps contemplating the greening yard. It’s not just that spring brings the regeneration of the earth and her beauty, the sights, sounds and smells our senses have craved over those long, dark months. Spring also brings a renewed hope that all can be right with the world, and, if we are paying attention, a great surge of joy in being alive and able to appreciate these awe-inspiring gifts we’ve been given.

That sense of joy and amazement is even more vivid this spring, as we live with the miseries of war and deprivation and tragedy around the world. We pray for an end to pain and loss, for the healing of families on both sides of conflict. We pray for an end to chaos, and the blessings of real freedom for the people of the Middle East. We pray for an end to disease and hatred and misunderstanding everywhere, all those dark clouds that block the spring sun.

And even if the path sometimes seems hidden, in this season of optimism we feel at least a little more hopeful that it exists and we can find a way to negotiate it. Peace never goes out of season, of course, although it sometimes seems to do just that. Peace in the depths of winter would be as welcome as peace in August.

But this spring, when the earth and our hopes are reawakening, the dream of peace is even more affecting and, somehow, appropriate.

Here’s to a happy New Year.

1 Comment

  1. Heather says:

    I agree with you, January 1st should not be the New Year, it is completely wrong. We should go by the seasons, Spring as you rightly remark is the beginning of the year, when the earth is waking from a winter sleep. It is also in the middle of the Christmas celebrations.

    Take care and look forward to Spring.

    Love

    Heather.

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