New Year, Same Year

Happy New Year!

New Year's Day is my favorite holiday.  There's no religion or politics involved.  We're not expected to buy anything, send dopey cards, wave a flag, or cook big meals.  It's just a new year.  Simple.  The Earth is a year older (not that it cares), or the human race has survived another trip around the sun ... there's something relaxing and simple about crowds gathering to watch a number change.  And if the old year was rotten we can say goodbye to it and "start fresh."

I'm not impressed with the "get puking drunk" mode of celebrating things.  I've actually heard people planning ahead about how sick they're going to be, or justifying it saying that mass consumption is good for the economy.  Luckily, we can avoid the crowds and deal with it in our own ways, or find quiet people and watch the mob do their thing on TV.

The underlying reality, that we're alive and driven by numbers at some deep level, remains.  A few days later (right about now) we find that everything feels the same and it's all and illusion.

My kind of holiday.

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2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #33, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.