Resolve When?

Here we sit at the start of another new year.

2013.

Two thousand and thirteen years, the Gregorian calendar has decided, from the beginning of... what.

Yes, yes, we understand that the ‘Zero’ date has its inception as the time of Jesus hence the ‘Anno Domini’ – the ‘Year of our Master/Lord’. But it is the beginning of something.

What?

Is it the beginning of ‘Modern Times’? Is it feasible to say that anything prior to ‘0’ is prehistory or, perhaps, irrelevant? Actually, year zero does not exist in the Anno Domini system used to number years in the Gregorian calendar and also in its predecessor, the Julian calendar. In this system, the year 1 BC is followed by AD 1.

To the Christians they will say that Year ‘1’ is the beginning of Christianity and, since the Gregorian Calendar is a Christian one, then that would be reasonable.

To everyone else?

Nothing. It denotes an empirical point in time when we decided that there is pre-Year ‘1’ dates that get bigger as they go back in time and there are post-Year ‘1’ dates that get bigger as they march towards us.

There is no major social or technological progression that begins then; the opposite, in fact, when the scientists of the old Muslim world began to fade out and the technology of the Western World had yet to appear there were the ‘Dark Ages’.

The Gregorian calendar, also called the Western calendar and the Christian calendar, is internationally the most widely accepted civil calendar. Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, introduced it. The Catholic countries of Europe, with other countries adopting it over the following centuries, adopted the Gregorian calendar initially.

The Gregorian calendar superseded the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC as a reformed version of the Roman calendar. According to the Roman calendar, 46 BC would be 708 AUC. Caesar’s Calendar would start in 45 BC (709 AUC).

(AUC = Anno Urbis Conditae, "in the year from the founding of the city". Remember that the ‘BC’ dates go ‘backwards’ towards ‘now’.)

Then there is the Islamic Calendar.

The Islamic calendar, Muslim calendar or Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 months in a year of 354 or 355 days. Being a purely lunar calendar, it is not synchronized with the seasons. With an annual drift of 10 or 11 days, the seasonal relation repeats about every 33 Islamic years (every 32 solar years).

It is used to date events in many Muslim countries (concurrently with the Gregorian calendar), and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper days on which to observe the annual fast (Ramadan), to attend the pilgrimage (Hajj), and to celebrate other Islamic holidays and festivals.

The first year was the Islamic year beginning in AD 622 during which the emigration of Muhammad (pbuh) from Mecca to Medina, known as the Hijra, occurred.

The current Islamic year is 1434 AH. In the Gregorian calendar 1434 AH runs from approximately 14 November 2012 (evening) to 4 November 2013 (evening).

Still here?

Then the Chinese have a separate, lunar, calendar. Their New Year festivities rarely align with anyone else’s. Similarly with the Islamic Calendar, it is used to determine their sundry festivals; the ‘Hungry Ghost’ festival, for instance, as well as their New Year; moon cakes (yue bing) are Chinese cakes traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (Zhongqiu) one of the four main festivals. The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching, when moon cakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy.

[Please excuse liberal use of ‘pin yin’!]

So there are a plethora of ‘New Years’. We could celebrate several ‘New Year’s Eves’ per annum.

There is something almost magical about New Year. It is almost as if the first day of the New Year is the harbinger of some momentous occasion.

We hold our breath in anticipation of an ‘EVENT’.

It never happens.

At some point in 1581, when the Calendar ordained by Pope Gregory was being designed, somebody decided that this is the day that will be the first day of January. This day will be the first day of the New Year and will be so forever.

An empirical decision made by a Pope, and not an Emperor—a Papal decision, then, that decreed that, from that day forth, everybody will make merry and welcome in the New Year and make resolutions that will not be remembered within the next month.

What if, just suppose, that the first day of the New Year should have been the 3^rd of February?

Have we been celebrating the wrong day since 1582 because of a clerical error?

Maybe, just maybe, this is why we should be doing the right thing all the time. Throughout the year and not just for one or two days.

Maybe, just maybe, somebody got it wrong.

Be nice to each other out there. But, most importantly, be nice to yourself. The first of January is not the only day to make a new start.

Every day is a good day to be a fresh you.