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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.
I think Brazil and Australia would like a word.
This is why we need to go back to the roots of what Christmas was co-opted from.
Gimme my winter solstice festival!
Summer Christmas is less magical
You mean the Portuguese and the English, who brought their traditions with them
Summer is a much better time to celebrate anyway. I don’t get why Europeans decided to do it in winter.
Anyway, it doesn’t stop being an important day… after an arbitrary week-and-half delay.
What else is there to live for in winter if not the celebrations.
It is aligned for the southern hemisphere as well, just with winter and summer reversed.
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.
Does January 1st coincide with the ending of winter anywhere?
I said “passing”, not “end”. The end of the year is roughly aligned with mid-winter, a.k.a. the winter solstice, the point at which light and life begin their return.
Does January 1st coincide with the ending of winter anywhere?
Ending? Winter just started 10 days ago.
Kind of my point
Ah, well, they moved it ten days away, very hidden and sneaky. Those dastardly fiends.
I hate this idea of winter starting on solstice because I hate winter. I love solstice because it means the horrible darkness is getting better. But I feel like December, January, February is a better representation of winter than January, February, March. March is so much nicer than December.
I’ve taken to mentally breaking the seasons in half. The winter solstice to halfway before the equinox is cold and dark, but getting brighter. The previous 8th is the hardest time. It’s getting darker and colder but snow is sparce. The 8th before the vernal equinox is the final stretch before spring is getting going.
I figure the solstice would be a far better tradition to bring back. Party twice a year? Peak and summer the low of winter. Sign me up
bring back
Uh… it hasn’t gone anywhere. Just because you haven’t celebrated it, doesn’t mean others haven’t.
Why just solstices? I maintain that secular society would probably enjoy the cardinal (solstices and equinoxes) and ordinal (halfway points) holidays that modern pagans tend to celebrate far better than the Christian ones. They’re evenly spaced out and correspond to changes in light and temperature
My wife and I do this. Not all of our friends are up for it (some think it’s too sacrilegious, but like everything I do is I’m not sure why they haven’t got that yet)
Fuck you, let us have fun.
Aren’t all forms of measurement (in this case it’s a measurement of time) completely arbitrary?
The measurement of earth orbiting for one revolution around the sun (a unit of time we refer to as a year) isn’t arbitrary. It’s clearly defined. You’ve either made one complete revolution or not. It’s just that the original starting point for the first measurement was arbitrary because you’d have to start somewhere.
Many forms of measurement are based on absolutes, like temperature, measured from absolute zero, or time, measured against the cesium standard (atomic clock). You’d have to break physics in order to be able to define them as arbitrary.
There’s still a ton of non-absolute values though. Like the difference between absolute zero and absolute zero + 1.
Choosing one second to be 9192631770 transitions of a caesium atom seems quite arbitrary.
The modern definitions of units feel even more arbitrary because they are inextricably tied to more organic origins. Consider the often made fun of fahrenheit scale which was the first to define a reasonably repeatable degree size by using two widely available reference points as the 100 and 0 ends of the scale, human body temperature for the high end and an ammonium chloride ice water mix for the low end.
The definition of a second was a bit jankier. Etymologically the name comes from a second hand added to a watch face to give some kind of indicator that the minutes are passing by. NIST has an excellent writeup on this subject. Over time different repeatable ways to measure a second have been determined all with the goal of having some action a human could use to calibrate their device’s second measurement to so their seconds are as long as everyone else’s.
The point is, we didn’t choose a second to be defined as some number of atomic oscillations. We had an already agreed upon definition of a second that used less precise methods than modern technology demanded and used a natural phenomenon that could be very accurately measured to make a less arbitrary definition.
Yeah and second is a 60th of a 60th of a 24th of a day. We just found the number of times cesium vibrates in that amount of time. 60 and 24 seem arbitrary to us now, but in addition to giving nice and useful chunks of time, they’re numbers that wouldn’t feel as arbitrary to ancient folks
Which is why I said define arbitrary earlier. I believe it had to do with accuracy of measurement equipment in the 1950’s as well as the ephemeral time scale, which was based on the observed movements of astronomical entities. So you can kinda argue either way. The selection of units can be influenced by an older system like you said, but that still is a system that was based on an observable or measurable phenomenon, which doesn’t fit the definition of arbitrary.
Maybe those planets/stars in the cartoon were aware of their own non-linear travel, as well as red/blue-shift effects, and that we earthlings based our original systems of measurement on them without prior knowledge of those factors, thus making them inconsistent and arguably arbitrary haha
I believe that was because at the time of its discovery, that was the most accurately we could measure it. It’s still based on a stable, constant, absolutely measurable phenomenon though. You can divide it into whatever arbitrary or non-arbitrary units you want, but that system of measurement is still based on an absolute standard.
It’s like saying that we now define one year as 1.234 earth revolutions around the sun. Or 2. Or whatever. Arbitrary units perhaps, but still based on an absolute phenomenon.
If you really want to throw a wrench into this whole concept though, mention that the earth’s rotation is slowing ever so slightly over time… so we have to add time on to the atomic clock to attempt to sync it better with the earth’s non-linear rotational velocity. Who’s arbitrary now?! 😀
But divisions of time are arbitrary, no? 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 30(ish) days in a month, 12 months in a year. There were other ways to divide all that up. There’s reasons they were divided that way, but the fact that we have to add a day every 4 years just because it’s not perfect says a lot haha
If there were reasons that it was divided that way, as you said, then that would make it non-arbitrary, as it was based on a system of logic. Define arbitrary, I guess.
Perhaps it would appear to be arbitrary though to those who aren’t aware of those reasons/logic, like the astronomical objects in the cartoon 🤷♂️😀
January 1st is defined, but it’s still pretty arbitrary. It would make more sense if it were the solstice 10 days earlier or the spring equinox or summer solstice etc. because at least that’s the start/end of “something”
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.
The Julian calendar, the predecessor to the modern Gregorian calendar, didn’t quite fully account for leap year shenanigans, and so drifted be about 1 day every century. The Gregorian calendar changed the way leap year works, but didn’t reset the beginning of the year. It just froze the drift where it was at the time.
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.
The Sun might think we’re celebrating being far away because we hate it.
Much like the celebration of the winter solstice is being happy the days are getting longer, maybe the Sun would think we’re happy we’re getting closer again.
Sol Invictus!
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?
Hey, gotta start somewhere.
N🌍CAR. Keep turning left and aim for where you started
It’s not that far off the solstice.
It’s basically a week away from the solstice, yeah.
New years >>>>>>Christmas
Bro I fucken hate Christmas as an adult. So much stress attached. Stressing about gifts for like 1-2 months of the year. Heck to the no. This year I just said no thanks to all gifts, asked all my relatives to donate to a charity of their choice instead, and that I would not be giving gifts. Best Christmas in a couple decades, seriously.
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.
In our defense, most people don’t know how long it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun one time. So it’s not so idiotic after all.
to what accuracy?
Well I’m not a comedian, so I’m kind of proud of this one. Some of my best work really.
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.
I shouldn’t be surprised that lemmites would find a way to make hating the new year a personality trait.
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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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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Aaand… they’re gone forever
Which was before today or not?
I think Brazil and Australia would like a word.
I can’t speak for Brazil, but here in Australia we’re too sleepy to care right now. Happy New Year.
They took over the celebrations during colonization. Do the natives even celebrate New Year?
