This is a bit disingenuous; what’s considered the “new year” is usually aligned with the seasons and the passing of winter, which is very much not arbitrary and completely dependent on the tilt of Earth’s axis.
The change of year is not aligned with the winter solstice. In fact the new year has been intentionally moved to an arbitrary date to obscure the solstice behind religious holidays.
It’s basically a week away from the solstice, still. A little more than a week. It’s exactly a week from Christmas Eve, which is what many countries (like where I live) celebrate as “the” Christmas. It’s pretty clear still, to me at least, that we celebrate this time because of the sun returning to higher distances above the horizon.
Fuck you, let us have fun.
Aren’t all forms of measurement (in this case it’s a measurement of time) completely arbitrary?
In this case I might argue that there are more “natural” points of reference (eg. solstices/equinoxes).
We use political/religious markers instead which are completely irrelevant to the planet’s orbit.
I mean, winter solstice is a little more than a week away, I’d say that was probably a significant influence on the designation of end of the year.
From the Sun’s perspective, perihelion or aphelion would make more sense, I guess.
By sheer coincidence, perihelion is a few days away at the time of writing, so we could lie to the Sun that this is an early celebration of that.
Of course, this comes with two problems: 1) The common era new year is actually a belated marking of the solstice (much like Christmas a week before). Perihelion will be later and later on average with respect to it due to the procession of the poles, so the lie is going to become more and more apparent over the coming centuries. 2) The Sun might think we’re celebrating being far away because we hate it.
We measure Right Ascension from the first point of Aries, which is the March equinox and one of the two times where the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator. (The other being the September equinox, of course.) That’s easier to determine with a telescope than peri-/aphelion, and more meaningful to people on Earth. Might suggest that as new year, and then we won’t upset the sun either?
New Year’s is my favorite holiday. Just gonna chill with a friend with beer, crackers and some chess/video games. My Christmas present from my dad was to go buy some fireworks with him, so I got a bunch of stuff to do at midnight.
Way better than Christmas or Easter or other baloney festivities. New Year’s is at least somewhat tangible even tho I do concede, it makes no difference.
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New year, new territory. I like it.
Even if it were arbitrary, I think a personified celestial body would instantly recognise the humanity in celebrating something happening again and again. Like when someone keeps falling over and the people witnessing it go “wahey!” every time.
Edit: or when the DVD screensaver logo hits the corner, which granted doesn’t happen as often but they go mad for it.
It‘s not completely arbitrary. New year is after the shortest day for daylight of the year.
You’re thinking of the Winter Solstice, which was on Dec. 21!
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How can a flat planet have people living on the bottom. Stop promoting such nonsense.
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Which was before today or not?
In theory, couldn’t we use the exact point the Earth is precisely between the sun and galactic center?
lol… casual searches for info on this yield a lot of questionable new-agey galactic alignment stuff.
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