Well here we are once again; the festivities are over, the credit card bills have arrived, your once snug fitting clothes are now chafing ever so slightly and on top of all this comes the crushing realisation that you have to back to work. Happy New Year my arse….
I know that my ever sunny disposition would suggest otherwise, but I’ve never really felt like celebrating a “new” year because more often than not, it just ends up being quite like the old one. Yes, you can resolve to do this, that and the other but let’s be honest with ourselves, how many of those resolutions actually succeed? January and maybe even the first couple of weeks in February will likely see a new you as you quaff pints of pureed fruit instead of Guinness, buy Holland and Barrett instead of Benson and Hedges and bask in the warm glow of self-satisfaction that comes with knowing you’ve beaten your cravings and changed your life for the better.
But that’s not true, is it? The warm glow isn’t self-satisfaction, it’s just your muscles screaming at you to stop as you stagger around the streets at some ungodly hour in the morning, sweating buckets and longing to be tucked up in your warm bed again. Having given up the old coffin nails is great but now you’re sucking on an e-cigarette so hard you risk inhaling it and have more patches than a bloody quilt. Finally, yes I’m sure the kumquat, kiwi and mango mush that you choke down is doing a power of good and cleaning out your colon (it’ll certainly be cleaning out your wallet) but you’d be getting the same anti-oxidant powers from chucking down orange juice at a fraction of the price.
It’s not even really a new year, is it? It’s just a wholly arbitrary point in the Earth’s revolution around the sun. Given how preoccupied our pagan ancestors were with regards the solstice and celebrating the harvest etc. how did we end up with New Year’s Day not being December 22nd? Surely it makes sense to have a new year where the days are now getting longer again and the evenings brighter? This concept of a new year was very important to our predecessors, so much so that they built monuments to it.
There’s a Neolithic tomb in Ireland called Newgrange which was built over 5,000 years ago and pre-dates both the great pyramids and Stonehenge. In this tomb (though tomb is probably underselling it – temple may be more appropriate) there is an opening above the main entrance through which sunlight only comes through between December 19th and 23rd and lights up the central chamber. The logistics in gathering the materials for the structure, building it and aligning it so perfectly are phenomenal when you consider that this was done with just man power and the most basic of tools. However, it was worth to those ancients because of what the new year signified. Thinking about it, for them it was always going to be pretty similar. Celebrate surviving the winter, rejoice at the coming of spring and warmer weather, sow the crops and set yourself up to survive to this point in 365 days’ time once more.
Anyway, I guess the same ol’ shit isn’t so bad. 2015 wasn’t an especially good year for me but I’m still here, still in good health and still employed. That’s something to be thankful for though I’m also the miserable, grumpy bastard that I always have been. So for 2016, I resolve to try and wear a smile more often than a frown, be more positive and try to have a bit more fun. I only get one life, I may as well live it.