A GOOD YEAR TO ALL OF YOU

Every so often, somebody writes a piece about why starting the year in January really doesn't make much sense. In the natural world, January isn't really the beginning of anything. At best, it is the dead of winter, and starting the year then gives us an excuse for a good party to break the monotony. At worst, it is too cold and miserable to go out to the parties. Why not, the writers inevitably ask, start the official year when we start the academic year? That corresponds to a real place in the natural year--harvest, and the autumnal equinox, and for that matter, the football season and the World Series, more or less.

I saw another such piece this year, and I can't even remember where any more, but this posting is addressed to its author, whoever she may be. Some of us always start the year near the autumnal equinox. That's what the Jewish tradition does. And it really does seem to fit better with the academic year, the natural year, and even the year of organized sports.

On the other hand, the Jewish tradition actually has three or four different new year's days. I won't go into detail, but they fall pretty much evenly distributed around the year.

For that matter, so does everybody else. Lots of businesses, and many government agencies, have fiscal years beginning at various times other than January 1. The Asians have a lunar new year that falls roughly a month later than January 1. Orthodox Christians celebrate their new year three or four weeks after the civil new year. The Buddhists have their own new year, which I'm foggy about the timing of, and the Muslim new year, like the rest of their purely lunar calendar, rotates all the way around the solar year over a decade or so.

At some level, all of us seem to realize that we need all the fresh starts we can get. So today I wish all of you a good year, a year of health and peace, whether you celebrate Rosh HaShanah or not.