Ask the Priestess

It is night, and quiet. I am at home, typing while reminiscing. Tonight, is New Year's Eve, and tomorrow - nay, in a little under 3 hours (local time), a new year will commence. Instead of 2016, we will be dating all our documents as 2017. I sit, type and remember what I have done in such nights in the past years. Last year, I was a friend's house in the south of England. Half of the party was in the hot tub, while others like myself chose rather to curl up in the living room. I felt blessed and observant, as ever surprised at the choices we all have yet often don't realise. The Hot Tub New Year's had come up suddenly, and I had decided to join these people whose hearts I knew but their lives a bit less so. The First Day of the Year saw us walking to the sea in gusty wind and smattering rain, joyous and full of life. Other years, I have spent the celebration with other friends at other parties, other homes, other countries. Once, I was in Vienna for the fabulous Sil...

And so, the year ended. Another year, another end. Another beginning. As a species, we have the marvelous gift of creating new starting points for our lives. We set up dates and hours when we make a cycle end and another commence. Thus, most cultures have set 'new year days' that somehow become momentous despite a certain amount of arbitrary definition. The most arbitrary, interestingly, is the most widespread - the celebration of 31st December/1st January threshold. I mean, after all, the year itself was designed for an emperor and re-designed for a pope. Not really something that really concerns most of us, let alone the flow in nature. And yet, this pivot point IS powerful. Despite the randomness, despite the awkwardness of ending a 12th month named after a 10th by replacing it with a month named after a god, and even despite our modern scientific thinking, it is powerful. We gather together, we party, we are enveloped in good will to each other, we revise our lives an...