In this post, I address things that are, for some, a matter of religious faith from a historical perspective. This means saying things that are based primarily on evidence outside of religious tradition. This is not to suggest that anyone is wrong to see them as matters of faith; it is rather an entirely different way of looking at something, and is in no way a challenge to the view taken by any religious tradition as a matter of faith or theology.
Here we are, at the end of 2021, the start of 2022.
It’s been quite a year for all of us, and I don’t need to talk about why. Everyone will also have had personal tribulations, sometimes related to wider events, and some not.
What I need to say isn’t about this year, or next year, but about the very idea of a ‘new year’.
Having a calendar is a good thing. It allows us to keep track of when things happen much more easily than just counting days in a never-ending, never-looping, continuous count (for reference, the current date, if measured as days since the start of our current year numbers, is “day 738,154”). Our months relate somewhat to seasons, and it is easy to figure out what day is a given fraction of a year ahead – especially if that is rounded to the closest number of calendar months.
A year is a real astronomical thing, during which we have a complete cycle of seasons and various measurable astronomical events. One might note in passing that there are minor differences between the solar year and the sidereal – of or relating to the stars – year, to the tune of about 20 minutes, or less than the difference between our regular calendar year and the typically referenced solar (or tropical) year. Our calendar year, with the correction of leap years, is an approximation of the solar year, and this difference between the solar and sidereal year is the basis of ‘astrological ages’, each about 2,160 mean solar years long; some of my readers will be aware of, or indeed remember, the heralding of the “age of Aquarius” in the 1960s and 1970s, as immortalised in the opening number of the musical Hair. A full cycle of 12 astrological ages is known as a ‘great year’. Needless to say, these have very little influence on anyone’s life.
The solar (or tropical) year is defined by the seasons – or at least the astronomical events that the seasons broadly follow, the solstices and equinoxes. It is real, and it is meaningful. However, the way we divide it up, and when one year ends and another begins, is entirely arbitrary.
It is also worth noting that not all calendars in use around the world are based on the mean tropical year the way the Gregorian calendar is, though the Gregorian calendar is the one used for pretty much all international purposes, enshrined in the International Standards Organisation's standard ISO 8601. However, lunisolar calendars are common traditional calendars used in various countries and religions, such as the Chinese calendar and the Hebrew calendar, and indeed the Computus – the basis for Christian movable feasts, such as Easter – is lunisolar in nature, deriving from the Hebrew calendar. These are ultimately based on the mean tropical year, but rather than approximating it as closely as possible and having regular, frequent leap years, lunisolar calendars have a fixed number of lunar cycles – a complete run of moon phases – in a year, and insert intercalary (‘inserted between’, from Latin literally meaning ‘between proclamations’, but perhaps more fittingly ‘between months’, meaning the additional, variable length month that was essentially ‘second February’ in the Roman Republican calendar) months and/or days based either on a regular system or based on observations. There is one widely used pure lunar calendar, the Islamic calendar, which has a fixed number of lunar cycles in the year and no intercalary insertions to keep it aligned with the seasons. This is why the Chinese New Year (aka Lunar New Year, given that it is not only used in China), Jewish holy days and festivals, and Christian moveable feasts ‘wobble around’ with respect to the Gregorian calendar, while festivals and holy days of Islam simply move linearly around the Gregorian year.
Months, as found in the Gregorian calendar, are arbitrary; they may have originated as marks of the lunar cycle, but now have nothing to do with them. Weeks are certainly arbitrary; even if one takes as true the seven day creation story of Genesis 1 as true, it is clear that an omnipotent God’s taking six days to make the world, then mandating a day of rest, is arbitrary on God’s part. Taking a historical approach (rather than a religious one), the seven day cycle likely began in Mesopotamia, the region between and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers around the edge of the Arabian peninsula adjoining to the bulk of Asia, and the home of well-known ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. It is thought likely that the Jewish adoption of the seven-day cycle originates from their (not terribly happy) contact with the Babylonian empire, although it seems that the Babylonians didn’t keep it as a fixed seven day cycle, instead marking as special the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days of each lunar cycle (starting with the new moon) as days on which certain things were forbidden. Given that the lunar cycle is about 29.5 days long, a lunar month is 29-30 days when measured astronomically, so the ‘week’ that fell across two separate months was 8 or 9 days long. The number 7 was of considerable importance to ancient Mesopotamian cultures, though the reason for this is not known with confidence. There are reasons to think there may have been an earlier Hebrew sacred day on which certain things were done or forbidden, but that it was tied to the lunar cycle, with sabbath (or, in modern Hebrew, שַׁבָּת, shabbat) being possibly etymologically linked to the Sumerian sa-bat ‘mid-rest’, or the full moon, falling halfway along the Mesopotamian lunar month.
In any case, let us return to the year. The mean tropical year, slightly less than 365.25 solar days, has objective meaning – the period between two equinoxes or solstices (of the same type). How we divide that time into weeks or months is arbitrary, but how we say which day is the start of the year is also arbitrary. It is the day which we have, as a society, agreed will be the start of the year. Obviously it is easiest if this is also the start of a month, but which month we use is, of course, arbitrary. The ancient Romans started the year with March, which is why September to December are named as they are numerically. It is true that they originally only had ten months, but the insertions of new months were actually at the end of the year, coming to us in modern English as January and February, whatever your primary school teacher might have told you. The creation of these months is, by the way, credited to the largely mythical second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, who claimed that his various reforms were on the advice of the nymph Egeria (which, one supposes, helped stop people arguing with him about them). In the Roman Republic, new magistrates (holders of certain elected public offices) – particularly consuls – began their term on the first of January, so this was seen as a new year alongside the first of March (inevitable given that they usually marked years by who was consul, rather than numerically), until the calendar reforms of Julius Caesar fixed the first of January as the civil new year for general purposes.
The date of the new year also moved when various countries switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, and for those countries who switched relatively late – including England and the wider British Empire – the difference was quite big, leading to the non-existence of the 1st to 11th of January in 1752. This moved the position of January 1st, relative to the mean tropical year, by 11 days (when it next happened), but that wasn’t all in terms of moving the date of the new year. The same act that switched to the Gregorian Calendar also moved the date of the civil new year in England and the wider British Empire (but not Scotland, who had been using January 1st since 1600) to its present position from the former traditional date of 25th March – not even the start of a month, but religiously significant as Lady Day, also known as the Feast of the Annunciation, marking the date on which Mary was told she was carrying the miraculously conceived Jesus.
Indeed, at different times and places in mediaeval Christian Europe, the new year was marked on Christmas day, on the first of January in the newer Roman style, on the first of March in older Roman style, on Lady Day, and on Easter, a moveable feast, leading to years of rather variable length. In England, the old new year’s day of 25th March still has importance as the basis of the quarter days, four roughly evenly spaced days in the year on which many (especially agricultural) rents are due, and on which in former times school terms started and servants were hired. I say ‘roughly evenly spaced’ as they were all placed on days of religious significance (each close to an equinox or solstice), being the aforementioned Lady Day, Midsummer Day (originally not of Christian significance but adopted by the church in order to take control of and try to stamp out pre-Christian practices seen as pagan) traditionally fixed as the 24th of June, Michaelmas (pronounced with a hard, short ‘I’ and a schwa for the ‘ae’, mick-ul-mass), the Feast of St Michael and All Angels on 29th September, and Christmas day, the 25th of December. In order that financial records still refer to whole years, the financial (and tax) year of the United Kingdom still falls on 25th of March on the old Julian calendar, per the difference between the two at the time of the change, the old ‘new years day’ becoming the last day of the financial year on 5th April.
The day on which the new year starts is arbitrary; even if one could not accept that as a logical proposition as a matter of simple reason, the fact that it has moved about quite chaotically at different times in different places shows us that. True, we could fix it to a specific astronomical event, such as a solstice or equinox, but that would still be arbitrary – the orbit of the Earth around the sun, and the corresponding cycle of the seasons, is a cycle, and like a circle it has no beginning or end. Pick a solstice or equinox; you have just been arbitrary as to which you picked. This brings me to the tradition (though now often overlooked) “Quaker testimony concerning times and seasons”.
In essence, what this testimony – once rigorously observed by Quakers – is that no day, nor set of days, is in itself of greater significance, certainly of greater sacral importance, than any other. There is no religious reason that most Quaker Meetings in traditionally Christian cultures hold their main Meeting for Worship on a Sunday; it is largely, at least in origin, a matter of convenience, and there are more than a few regular Meetings for Worship in Britain held on other days, though the only Local Meetings I am aware of that hold their ‘main’ Meeting for Worship on another day are those in special situations, such as those attached to a university. Quakers should not, in line with this traditional testimony, attach any religious significance to Sundays, nor any other days of the week, nor to any part of any liturgical calendar. Lent and Advent as liturgical seasons with traditional Christian observances are not religious special times of year. Easter and Christmas are not religiously special days, and certainly the calendar chock-full of saints’ days are not, according to this tradition, in any way, important.
I have written about this testimony and what Quakers today perhaps ought to make of it on several occasions before, and regular readers may be well aware of my view on this. However, I will try to put it succinctly now.
I agree with this testimony that days have no particular inherent meaning. However, as a society – wider society, not the Religious Society of Friends – we give them meaning. I would suggest that the Religious Society of Friends should avoid giving meaning to days ourselves, but we are situated within a wider society that has done so, and will continue to do so – maintaining the significance of existing ‘special days’ and creating new ones as time passes. Creations of the modern age that are likely to be well-known to Friends include Armistice day (known in the USA as Veterans Day) and Remembrance Sunday established in the early 20th century, Hiroshima Memorial day (known by various names) that became world-wide later in the 20th century, and Holocaust Memorial (or Remembrance) day, internationally established in the 21st century though referring to events in the mid 20th century.
Being situated within a society that gives importance to these days, and to religious festivals, means that we cannot avoid them having significance for us as people, and what matters to us as people inevitably matters to us as Quakers, even if it is not for Quaker reasons. We can draw from this positively, rather than denying the days’ importance and meaning, even while we remember that they are not of religious significance according to traditional Quaker theology. Some thoughts on how we do this for different days can be found in various posts tagged ‘times andseasons’ on this blog, but in general they can be used as a prompt to our spiritual reflections, as ways to come together as a community, and as ways to connect with the wider community. Any given day can serve any or all of these functions.
The ‘new year’ is arbitrary, even if the idea of a year is not. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take meaning from it. The symbolism of renewal, of putting the past behind us and looking to the future, is as potent for Quakers as for anyone else, and as meaningful now as it has ever been – if not more so than in many other years. So make your resolutions (but be kind to yourself in what you resolve, and if you fail to achieve them) if you will. Open doors to let out the old and let in the new, if that has meaning for you. Do some first footing, if that is your tradition. If you are in the habit of spiritual journaling, you can, if you want, take some inspiration today and tomorrow from the change in the arbitrary number we assign to the year.
My own thoughts in this line, I will share with you, in case you are interested or perhaps find them helpful. On first reflection, my gut reaction is to say “well, let’s hope next year is better, because this one has been pretty darn bad – good riddance to bad rubbish”. But both my own experience of the year and its impact on our society has not been entirely negative. For even those who have had the worst of it this year, for the impoverished, for asylum seekers scorned by wealthy countries, for those who have faced horrible illness of any type, for those who have experienced terrible bereavement, even for each of these there will have been moments of joy in the year, small though they might be in comparison to the rest.
In a time of general unpleasantness, the times of joy may stand out all the more in contrast to their surroundings; alternatively, they may become obscured in our memory by the misery that was around them. Both are natural reactions. On this day, if no other, I choose not to dwell on the tribulations of the year, in my own life and in the life of the world, but to reflect on the moments of joy in the year. Instead of fears for the year ahead, I will focus on the opportunities, the possibilities – what I hope for and look forward to. It is not productive or helpful to try to maintain such an outlook all the time, but for this one day I will try, and I am sure I will learn something from doing so.
Written 31st December 2021
Note 1/1/22: as originally published, this post contained an erroneous use of terminology, which has been corrected.
