Autumn has always felt more like the real ‘new year’ to me.
It is not only marked by a definite seasonal change but also a change in lifestyle habits. People coming back from summer holidays and resuming their regular work-a-day lives, perhaps starting new courses or activities. Also a change in what people wear as well as what they do in their free time, which may include either more or less indoor or outdoor activities.
The official New Year – January 1st – happens in the middle of either winter or summer, depending on where one lives. But aside from being told that this is the New Year, as in the beginning of a new calendar year, there is little that actually makes it feel ‘new’.
But September is the time of the autumn equinox and you can actually feel things changing. The weather is getting cooler, the days are getting shorter … you can feel it in the air. Shop windows start showing winter clothing, kids are going back to school, and there is almost a feeling of exquisite melancholy as we prepare for even shorter days ahead … getting ready for the next cycle.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel this too? The January 1st New Year thing leaves me cold. All the hype of having to celebrate this somehow when to me it just feels like yet another winter day. No big deal.
casa azahar 
Well, when I was a little girl growing up as a member of the Bahai World Faith, we officially celebrated the new year on the Spring Equinox, as that was the time of rebirth and renewal. But the Autumn Equinox makes just as much sense in terms of winding down and starting school. Then the Wiccans consider the year to begin anew after Halloween, when the harvest is completely over and all green growth has died (this only works in the N. Hemisphere!). Wiccans traditionally begin the year of initiation on Feb 2, so I guess it is a new year any time depending on what you are doing.
I have always found the Jan. 1 thing to be arbitrary and no big deal. Except, any excuse for a party! So we embrace it here.
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It has always felt like an ‘imposed’ celebration. Yeah sure, any excuse for a party might be fine, but such a big fuss is made over January 1st? I’ve just never understood this.
And it all went OTT for the millenium … I was at home recovering from an operation at the time and sitting on the sofa watching all these incredibly desperate looking people on television so pathetically trying to Have A Good Time. 🙄
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Spring has definitely sprung here, with daffodils going berzerk and birds getting aggressively territorial and hayfever reasserting itself. In Adelaide the transition to spring was never so obvious, but here it means the end of frosts so it’s noticeable.
That being said, I like starting the New Year in the summer. One can Do Things in summer. People are generally in a better mood in the summer (when it’s not over 40C).
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Being Jewish-ish (not a typo), I celebrate New Year round about now anyhow…
And suffer from a deep and ineradicable desire to buy a new satchel, pencil case, set of notebooks, ruler, protractor, shoes and tie. To the extent where I have to be dragged backwards out of stationers.
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Yeah, I always want to buy a new diary/daybook thingy and some new pens. 🙂
It’s partly to do with being a teacher and my usual students slowly slinking back to classes during September … they mostly don’t get totally going until October.
This month had to buy a new series of text books for my upper-intermediate students … just love opening the books and inhaling that new book smell.
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I suddenly developed a need to go to the bookstore.
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The Celtic New Year began ar the end of october, Halloween. This is the anciet new year. I think it’s interesting that schhols and colleges, here in the UK, still recognise the autmn as the start of the new academic year.
It feels kind of natural to me, for some reason.
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I’ve always been very conscious when it’s *September*, but I was thinking it’s because that’s my birth-month. But there is something in what you say, az.
I often think of the year passing in terms of September — there’s just this quality to the light and shadow, you know?
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there is almost a feeling of exquisite melancholy as we prepare for even shorter days ahead
I get seasonally affected, so the melancholy doesn’t seem so exquisite to me. I’m at my worst in Jan/Feb, but this time of year reminds me that it’s coming and triggers a minor episode of the blues. I had a couple of days of collywobbles when the kids started back at school the other week, just thinking about the endless daily routine.
In other ways, Autumn is nice. Beautiful leaves. Wild mushrooms in abundance. That first chill but bright evening with a faint smell of coal in the air at twilight – it feels so typically British.
God knows why I chose to live in such a dreadful climate, though. It’s not the wind and rain – you can wrap up against them – it’s the dark!
Spring…that’s the time for me.
(and I don’t celebrate 1st Jan. It’s always a damp squib.)
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I tend to be seasonally affected, too, though not with “the blues” and more so with an overwhelming tiredness. Not fatigue, but actual sleepiness. It’s not been so bad since I moved into my apartment four years ago- it has actual *windows*- and last year was even less so having a desk next to a window. Getting even a little bit of natural sunlight around me seems to help. I’ve also found that using a full-spectrum light bulb for an hour or two in the evening helps a bit.
While I like winter to a point, it stops being fun when it’s below zero and you’re up to your ass in snow.
Autumn, however, has always been my favorite season. I love when the air turns crisp and cool, and smells like crispy leaves. The only annoyance of fall is all of the college kids are back at school, and the train I take to work also stops near a big commuter college (UIC).
I don’t really celebrate New Year’s like most people do- New Year’s eve is annual amateur night and all of the drunks are out in full force. I usually get a single bottle of bubbly (K can’t stand the stuff, so I usually wind up with a couple of mimosas for brekkie on Jan. 1st) and we stay in with a movie. Before K was around, I usually stayed home with friends or by myself, with Chinese take-out and a movie or a good book. 🙂
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I’ve even managed to give up feeling like a loser for having nowhere to go on New Year’s Eve. Does anyone like it?
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I love both spring and autumn and can find good reasons for beginning the year with either one of them. Calendars are arbitrary and calendar dates meaningless out of context. A standardized calendar is necessary for business, obviously.
To me, New Year’s Day is just another day. I went out on New Year’s Eve when I was young, but haven’t for 20 years, probably. I seldom even stay up until midnight. Big whooping deal. To consider it a time to start over is ridiculous. Any day can be a time to start over. It’s like this date on a calendar has some sort of magical significance that heralds life changes.
Using natural cycles makes a lot more sense. At least then your can find some genuine symbolism to go along with it all. Nature, our seasons, clearly show a circle. Birth, growth, harvest, death, rebirth. A calendar is a linear progression.
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I have always loved the natural circle cycle. We don’t usually go out for New Years unless it is somewhere where we can stay over night. After midnight it is too dangerous on the roads: all those drunk amateurs. Or amateur drunks.
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Amongst the pagan community there are as many different new-years as there are outside it. It always amuses me how people need this single mark in their yearly cycle.
Personally I celebrate at least six seasonal dates(the solstices, equinoxes, Samhain and Imbolc), I also commemorate the births of my children, the death of my father, and Remembrance Day (the 11th of the 11th, not the nearest convenient Sunday). I have comrades to honour and do so then.
I see no need to single out any single day as the ‘beginning’ of the year, or conversely the end of it.
But there again I am a contrary old beggar 🙂
Blessings,
Matholwch /|\
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Waves to the drood. How the heck are ya, you contrary old beggar? Ticker OK?
A teacher friend once refered to the last day of the summer term as ‘Teacher’s New Year’:
“All the teachers wander the streets, pished out of their minds.
Actually…one of the few Hogmanays I’ve enjoyed in recent years was over at his place. I particularly remember a guy with cerebral palsy who, because of his motor-control difficulties, had to hold his spliffs in a long cigarette holder. I have a vague recollection of convincing a couple of Canadian visitors that it was traditional to stand in the street and howl at passing cars.
Of course, i was verrr verrr drrunk…
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Hi Eddie 🙂
Still baring your butt at the inanities of modern life then? I’ve pretty much given up on h2g2… most everyone I’d like to talk to comes to Az’s speakeasy.
Blessings,
Matholwch /|\
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“Still baring your butt at the inanities of modern life then?”
Not sure about that, Math, but we all know about his scrotum scar now – does that count? 😉
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I’ll show you my scrotum any time, baby.
Naturally I have to take issue with Matholwch (and I’m sure you wouldn’t have it any way 😉 ). I’m fairly confident that modern life is no more or less inane than life in times past.
Anyway, it’s chimpanzees that show their butts. Bonobos do it face-to-face. Apparently. When the males aren’t busy penis fencing and the females getting down and dirty.
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By the way…there’s a big new megaTescos near me which has a display of Rosh Hashanah food. Pretty cool. They’ve put all the ‘ethnics’ in one aisle, so Israeli elides into Lebanese and onwards towards the subcontinent.
They also have special kosher cheese from that well-known Palestinian dairy producer, Cheeses of Nazareth. “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
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Scrotal scarring huh? Tribal rite or NHS? I have had the latter but sell it as the former to those I think’ll believe it 🙂
As for Tesco’s I’m surprised the Israeli food hasn’t seized several Lebanese shelves and kicked the others down, before handing the whole thing over to Pasta and Dijon Mustard.
Matholwch
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As I read this thing I was reluctant to contribute because it seemed that everyone had lower case names. And then I spotted Reed and Matholwch and felt comforted. I will not be called trig. Horrible.
An Autumnal New Year makes sense if you’re a farmer. It’s when you plow the ground to prepare for sowing. I think Spring makes more sense for most other people.
I’m more interested in the cycle of the seasons. Here in Ireland Spring starts on St Brigid’s day, the 1st of February. It’s later in Britain, isn’t it?
I think the Celtic calandar matches better with the growth of plants, and the British matches better with the weather. The 1st of Feb rarely feels like Spring, but it often looks like it.
Snowdrops, anyone?
TRiG.
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Well, autumn is also a time when people come back from their summer holidays, kids go back to school, etc. As teachers, Nog and I are aware of the change in our work schedule with our students coming back for another year.
Spring here also offers other lovely changes, but not specifically lifestyle change ones.
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