The End and the Beginning...

We have arrived at the end of the year 2024, which—even as I write these words—has already changed to the beginning of 2025 in many parts of the world. Global celebrations with parties, fireworks, and food and drink have long marked the end of December and the beginning of January as a "new year" with a new number to designate it.

From ordinary people to news and entertainment media, it is customary to "look back" on the year that has passed, and remark on its significant moments regarding births and deaths, engagements, marriages, achievements, failures, tragedies, wars and treaties of peace, political elections, regime changes, news of [and gossip about] celebrities or other prominent personalities, the top movies and videos, the top songs in popular music, foods, weather, fads, stock-markets, sports champions, "annual" statistics of every imaginable kind, etc., etc. And, of course, all sorts of “projections” for what might happen in the new year. Then, at midnight, people attending parties and celebrations feel that they have "changed"—that they have now been "clothed" with a new year of possibilities, a chance for a new life (or at least a better life) which prompts them to make "resolutions," most of which are forgotten in a few weeks.

Most of these secular traditions have not varied much since I was a boy in the late-1960s-early-1970s. But there are many differences too. I recall being with parents and grandparents, crowding around a twenty-inch screen on a black-and-white television watching Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra play fancy music while "everyone" at Times Square in New York City, watching on TV, and—basically—the WHOLE WORLD waited for famous "ball" to drop and officially declare the beginning of January 1, 1970 or whatever the new number was. 

The year 1970 sticks in my mind from childhood. I was an unusually curious and bright first-grader who learned a few things about "decades" and became fascinated with the idea that "we are entering a new decade!" It felt so expansive, so full of possibilities, this new decade that began in 1970.

That was 55 years ago.

How did we get these day and weeks, months and years? Well, there are of course many different calendars and calendar systems which people still follow in many parts of the world, that belong to their religious and cultural heritage. But the “Global Village” in its interactions and its doing-business (if nothing else) uses a common annual calendar which grew from ancient Roman civilization. The names of the months are Latin-based, indicating gods or numerical points: thus “January” is for “Janus,” who stood for the “gateway” to the new year, while “December” indicated the “tenth” month, which it actually was in the early Roman Republican 10 month calendar (notice that in current usage these “numerical months”  are all “off” by a deficit of two). At some point in the Roman Republican period, the first two months of January and February were added on at the beginning. It was a solar calendar, so the effort was made to correspond to the solstices and—Rome being in the temperate zone—the patterns of the seasons which were important to agricultural societies. Calendars were fine-tuned, days added, in order to keep aligned with the changes in the relationship between earth and sun.

The Romans were good mathematicians, calculating that what we now refer to as a “trip around the sun” took 365 days and a bit less than six further hours. And it was Julius Caesar (who saw himself as a consolidator of the Roman world) who instituted the “Julian Calendar,” which cleverly established the “leap day” once every four years to make up for the accumulations of extra hours at the end of each year. The Julian Calendar is almost the same as today’s common calendar. A solar year is actually 365. 2425 days. It wasn’t unreasonable for the Romans to think that rounding it up to a quarter of a day was “close enough.” They probably never dreamed that the same calendar would still be in use 1500 years later. By then, the Caesarian glitch of putting a little too much “leap” into the quadrennial Leap Year has resulted in a calendar that was 10 days ahead of the actual annual trip around the sun. 

So the math experts came up with a better arrangement for the future by skipping certain leap years (math nerds can look up the details) to bring the recorded year closer to the solar year. This was also important for the Church’s calculation of movable feasts, above all Easter, which was always celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox, which was designated for March 21. In 1582, another Roman—Pope Gregory XIII—established the official new calendar by instituting the changes and by subtracting ten days from the month of October of 1582 (just for that year, to put the calendar back “in sync”—thus October 4, 1582 was followed the next day by October 15, 1582). Catholic countries switched to the “Gregorian” calendar first, but eventually all Western countries adopted it as the common calendar.

Then, in the 19th century, the West spread its civil and economic institutions by way of its colonial system all over the face of the earth. These proud “world powers” proceeded in the 20th century to fight a horrible war against one another, then another horrible war with more countries, from which emerged a global standoff that almost literally set the entire world on fire. But people also discovered amazing medical interventions, technologies of all kinds, antibiotics, sanitation, water purification, indoor flush toilets, unprecedentedly rapid modes of transportation, electricity, radio, television, computers, the internet. We also learned from some of our most destructive mistakes (while at the same time inventing new mistakes). The past century-and-a-quarter has been quite a ride. The 20th century in which I was born is loaded with years that are associated with historical events and changes of gigantic significance: 1914, 1917, 1939, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1956, 1968 (oh boy, 1968), 1989 … and it has continued into the 21st century with 2001 [as in September 11], and—alas, I fear the future may regard it as such—2022 (the beginning of a War that is now being fought in Ukraine but may yet flare up [or pause for a “peace deal,” smolder for a few years, and then explode] all over the Global Village in ways we can hardly imagine).

For billions of people, this is not their “primary” calendar and it does not mark today as the eve of the New Year. The Islamic World has a different calendar (though they also use the common calendar for secular and globally interactive purposes). The Chinese “officially” use the Western calendar, but the ancient popular Chinese lunar calendar with its Chinese zodiac is still a strong cultural reference point for a billion and a half Chinese. All these diverse calendars, with their embedded historical traditions and peculiar variations, are fascinating. Still, in the big transportation-communications-hypernetworked world—the world where people travel and buy and sell and trade, or wish they could—tonight is New Years Eve 2024. 

In the 21st century, "New Years Eve" has become (if one wants it to be) an day-long, live-streaming virtual event, where one can "pop in" on many of the large outdoor gatherings in famous cities all over the world and watch countdowns-to-midnight, celebrations, and huge fireworks displays as it “becomes 2025” as much as 16 hours earlier than in New York City, U.S.A. At 8:00 AM this morning, Sydney, Australia was ringing in 2025 with its world-renowned fireworks over Port Jackson Bay. Soon come Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Mumbai, the Gulf States, Europe with Rome and Paris, then London (where suburban Greenwich still hosts the world’s “official” 0:00 hours clock that sets the standard for the rest of the world). As I write in this moment, 2025 is passing over the Atlantic, so there’s been a bit of a lull on human celebrations, but Brazil is on the horizon: 8 minutes to 2025 for Rio and Sao Paolo.

It is (or will be) 2025 in all those places by the time New York drops the ball in Times Square.

So why do I ramble about all this? The calendar and the years that pass are meaningful for history, for the past, present, and future. They mark the steps of a journey that the whole world now consciously takes at least in a material sense. But why these numbers of this “Roman” Western calendar? The original Roman Calendar (Caesar’s calendar) had “Year One” set at the foundation of Rome 700 years prior to Caesar. Other calendars have other “origin dates.” It’s interesting that what is called the “Common Era” (C.E.) has the number 2025 for the new year. Also, this is the only calendar that counts from the center of time rather than a fundamental beginning. Before the Year One “C.E.” the numbers go backwards: One B.C.E. (Before Common Era), with the previous years denominated 2 B.C.E., 3 B.C.E., etc. Do people throughout the world who use this calendar ever wonder what’s so special about the Year One C.E.? What happened during this seemingly unremarkable year that inaugurated the “Common Era”? What was so important about that year that the prior years counted down to it, and subsequent years continue to be counted up from it? 

We are about to record the beginning of 2025, which means that we are marking (maybe not strictly mathematically, but in a numerically approximate and existentially symbolic manner) the passage of two thousand and twenty five years since… what? 

When I was young everyone was still using A.D. and B.C (“Anno Domini” and “Before Christ” or the equivalent phrase and, if necessary, initials), whereas now these have fallen out of secular usage. Of course, Christians have long concluded by historical indicators that Jesus was probably born around 4 B.C. and that December 25 is a liturgical date rather than a verifiable birthday. So, the numerical precision of the “common calendar” is a “little off” (this is not unusual in calendar systems, as we have seen).  Still, the symbolic reference of the number remains the birth of Jesus Christ. 

This means that whatever we call it, for whatever reason, whenever we say “Happy New Year” we are acknowledging (even if only remotely and implicitly) that the very measuring of time within history is marked according to the central event that gives meaning to the whole of history: God coming among us in the flesh, entering our history, dwelling with us.

After nearly 62 years of this life, I continue to see more and more why the years are aptly marked in this way. It still matters. It always matters.

Merry Christmas Octave! And Happy New Year…