New Year

This mostly a re-post of something I wrote two years ago, but I think about is this time of year... Why is December 31 the end of the “year”? Well, first what is a year; on earth it is the time is takes to complete one full orbit around the sun, more specifically 365 Days, 5 Hours, 48 Minutes, 46 Seconds. In order to keep track of how many times we go around the sun, it is convenient to keep track of each orbit by designating one day as the officially beginning and end of the year. But why December 31st, that date has no astrological significance at all (it does have cultural significance; some say it celebrates Jesus’ briss, actually many European countries used to start their new year on Christmas, while others start their new year on Easter). And Christmas was most likely modified to fall near the winter solstice (also known as Yule; it celebration the shortest day of the year). But we most recognize that the solstice (and all seasons for that matter) has nothing to do with the closeness to the sun, it has to do with the tilt of the earth. Think about the orbit of the earth around the sun, it goes in an ellipse, not a circle, so logically you would think that the summers and winters would happen twice a year, not once (click here or see below). However, summer and winter are dictated by whether or not a particular hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, so even though, right now, New York is several million miles closer to the sun then during July, it is colder now because we are tilted away from the sun. I believe that the New Year should have a direct significance to the obit of the earth, either the day the earth is closest (aka the perihelion) or farthest (aka aphelion) from the sun. If we were to create a New Year’s date for other planets this would surely be the most reasonable, so why not for us. Randomly I choose to celebrate the earth’s aphelion as the indicator a new year, which for 2008 happens to be January 4th at 3:00pm. And until I get better information I deem this year to be 4,404,000,008. Enjoy

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Comments

Glen Lipka said…
In general, this culture started in the northern hemisphere and it started much longer than 2000 years ago. It's the solstice. The shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. It was designated as "holy" way before they understand the tilt or revolution of the earth. If you just measured how long the days were, you would realize that the winter solstice is the shortest. If you wanted to make a metaphor for a life and this cycle, the birth and death would be when the day is weakest (baby and elderly). The transition out of Youth is the spring equinox, when we exit childhood and enter adulthood, we are half day and half night. Then our power period starts until we hit middle age; the summer solstice. This is when we have the height of days. From there on it's a slow waning until death and the cycle begins again.

Metaphors are very powerful. This has very little to do with astronomy and everything to do with our incredible ability as a species to come up with metaphors of our lives.
11:55 PM
Dan Lipka said…
Solstice would also work, but I wasn't looking a metaphor, I was looking for the opposite, something that was more objective. In fact, I was looking at it from the perspective of astronomy. If we were designate the start of each year for another planet, would we really consider its seasons. Also, if we use the solstice as a metaphor, than that metaphor would have completely different meaning depending on if you are in the northern or southern hemisphere (and no meaning at all if you lived on the equator). The aphelion is much more universal.
9:52 AM
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