Five New Years

[azurelunatic]

...Really, I do have five.

I celebrate the secular December 31/January 01 new year the most. It's the one I've grown up celebrating, and it means the most to me. Traditions will do that.

Next, I celebrate Chinese New Year. Again, a celebration I grew up with, more an excuse to throw a party and eat that delightful bean candy stuff that I haven't had in years. My father made a point to make friends with the Chinese grad students coming into UAF, because they were strangers in a strange land and he doesn't like people to feel alone and left out, and that meant for us children, more holidays, more friends, and interesting things to eat (though I could, at the time, have done without the chili oil in the soy sauce that I ate unexpectedly. They tell me that I was rather dignified, even with tears pouring out of my little eyes).

After that, a holiday unique to myself, my former fiancee the Lady E., perhaps at one point boojum, and of course pyrogenic: Joshian New Year. The Lady E. and I started a cult to worship pyrogenic, you see, and the cult had a new year based on his birthday. We were fourteen and fifteen; Pyro was sixteen. It was delightfully silly.

Finally, Samhein. I celebrate it, of course, but it's never really pinged as "New Year" to me, perhaps because I have so many. The symbolism of the snow, and the death of the old year touch me, but somehow don't equate to "New Year." I suppose that's because I think of New Year as birth, and celebration, rather than black deep hibernation? Ostara is a far more logical New Year to me.

Also showing up on my New Year radar is the New Year from the Jewish part of my heritage. It's a heritage I haven't explored as much as I might, or as much as I might like, but it's still there. I've never celebrated that new year, but I will at some point in my life.


I have five, or more, different celebrations of a new year to mark. Every day, really, is new...

Comments

[tiel.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about Samhain and Ostara. Perhaps because I was raised celebrating the December 31/January 1 new year, and was taught that it was a time of rebirth and starting over fresh, it is hard for me to see the new year as a time of death and hiberation.

Its funny, how what we were taught at a young age infulences the way we look at holydays, regardless of how our beliefs otherwise change.

[azurelunatic]

I suppose it's whether we've been trained to see death as the end of life or as the beginning... either is logical...

[tiel.livejournal.com]

Yes, that does make sense...

new years and harvest

[votania.livejournal.com]

for me, this time of year is about the harvest as well as bringing in the new year (I pay my respects to three of the "new years" because of my background).

In Arizona you can plant and grow pretty much all year....because of the climate, and because of my green thumb, I've almost almost always had something that was ready to pull about this time.... man I miss having a yard..sigh...my garlic is doing well though :) I almost didn't think it would sprout because of the shade in the back...if it does really well, I should be able to harvest that little beauty around Yule.

D.E.

Re: new years and harvest

[azurelunatic]

This is a harvest time of year here and many places.

It's also about the settling in for the winter...

My impression of the seasons will be forever marked by my childhood experiences.

Re: new years and harvest

[votania.livejournal.com]

as it is for the rest of us...or at least most of us...

D.E.