And the new sun rose bringing the new year.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Passing of Arthur,” Idylls of the King
It’s arbitrary, of course, this designation of January 1st as New Year’s Day on the Gregorian Calendar, but it’s also unavoidable. Everywhere around us, people are gathering, celebrating, making resolutions, ringing out the old, ringing in the new.
The Jewish calendar’s Rosh Hashanah, near the Autumnal Equinox, always feels like the real New Year to me, with its time-honored rituals of renewal and return. The ancient Persian New Year, observed at the Vernal Equinox and recalled in in the Jewish and Christian celebrations of Purim and Mardi Gras, also moves me. And, like so many of my brother and sister pagans, I experience the Winter Solstice as a truly numinous moment, a time to release the past and welcome the future as the sun dies and is reborn.
This year, it’s especially meaningful to find Chanukah so close to the solstice, filling the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I’ve been lighting my candles each night with particular pleasure. Yet I’m happy, too, to join the rituals associated with the secular, popular New Year. In my view, there can never be too many moments of renewal and return.
Feminism and Religion 