So with New Years 2012, the question is if the Mayan calendar thing is true and we only have a few days left, what do we want to do with it? Which is a terrible question really because let’s be honest; everyone is sick of hearing how the world is going to end. It seems like every six months someone’s got a new theory as to when the world is going to inexplicably burst in flames.
You know who didn’t think the world was going to end?
The Maya.
I found you all a good video on how the Maya never claimed that the world was going to end but rather its just a changing in the B’akt’un a measure of time in their calendar so just click here to put your mind at rest.
Hurray and celebrate the world not ending…..again.
But sometimes I think this whole 2012 thing had less to do with the world ending and more to do with the same morbid weirdness people come out with every December.
I wrote a blog post last year called I Hate People Who Cry On New Year’s Eve, which reading back over it, had very little to do with New Year’s Eve or people crying but more to do with myself, how I was feeling and the journey I was on. So in a lot of ways I was indulging in the fallacy of the New Year milestone along with everyone else.
Yay for not being as clever as I thought I was.
But hell there’s always this year.
But really there’s something strange about December. All over the world in the depths of winter, people gather together and celebrate the fact that the sun is going to come out again. In Celtic pagan tradition the winder solstice is when the god of light (usually called Lugh or some variation) is born again. The same is true of the Roman Saturnalia. The same is true of Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus and one of Jesus’ epithets is the Lord of Light. Chanukkah (Hanukkah) is also known as the Festival of Lights. The Chinese have Dongzhi. Hindus have Pancha Ganapati.
So maybe I was unfair last year when I dissed people for imaging that the end of December was a milestone to reflect on their lives instead of reflecting on them every day.
You’re still not allowed cry though.
But I’m about to turn twenty. I feel like that should mean something, like there should be a list of things I do before I lose the suffix -teen forever but honestly I haven’t felt like a “teenager” for a long time. I’m pretty happy with the pace I’m living my life at.
So maybe I was wrong maybe the world is ending, maybe it ends of the time and then we build it up again around ourselves.
There is a poem by the great Islamic poet, Rumi, called ‘My Worst Habit’. I put in my post last year too but back then I didn’t get it. Now I understand it much better. It remind me of my own relationship with midwinter and the return of whatever god of light you like.
Orla ní Dhúill 
You took the words right out of my mouth on this topic! Also, on a fun side not, I am also turning 20 in a few days. I joke and say, “Well, if the world is going to end, at least I won’t be a teenager when it does finally all go to hell.” Even though I have not felt like a teenager in years either. It’s a little weird how similar this post sounds to something I would say haha nice job.
And we both did NaNo this year. Ha.
Can I ask–what exactly is wrong with the whole ‘reflect on the past year’ thing? Sure, the end of a year is pretty arbitrary, and yeah, it would be nice if we did it constantly, but a year is a nice unit of time, long enough that there can have been appreciable change since the last one, short enough that you have a fair few of them. So what’s wrong with it?
I actually softened this opinion a bit in the following blog but my initial problem with it is that it gave people an excuse not to reflect at other time. Also this blog post was commenting on a post on a different blog where I was annoyed about (unnamed) people I knew were crying or getting morbid on New Year’s, they waited all year to evaluate their lives and come up with goals only to be disappointed that they hadn’t achieved last year’s ones, leaving me a bit frustrated saying “of course you haven’t achieved them, you’ve barely examined your goals at all since the last time we were all sitting around drinking on new year’s!”
That isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with using New Years as a time to set new goals and take stock. I love New Year’s! That’s why I was annoyed about certain friends spoiling it for me last year with melodrama. But like I said I was unfairly harsh in some ways, even a little hypocritical, and I admit that in the follow on post.