Happy New Year
This is my pitch for why the spring equinox makes the best new year.
New things are actually happening. There is a sense of newness. The newness of 1st January is only it being 1st January. It has been created. The newness of 21st March is all around.
If you do Christmas it's too close to new year. The midwinter slog is real, which is why my proposal to make Christmas once every eighteen months is unpopular. But there's a full week of liminal time no one seems to know what to do with.
If you do new year's resolutions, when do you have more energy: the dark, damp, middle of winter after the excess of Christmas? Or March with more light, longer days, blossoms, and budding?
Lots of cultures and religions have new years by the lunar, solar, or lunisolar calendar. I'm proposing a fixed 21st March but technically this is not always spring equinox. Purists may argue so I'm willing to concede changing dates. Hinduism does, Islam is doing right now (Eid Mubarak!), Spring Festival aka Chinese New Year of course. The equinox is astronomical but the point stands that I'm not against it moving.
What about Easter, people say. Easter is nicely lunar, yes, about rebirth, yes, around this time, yes. The formula is the first Sunday after the first full moon after 21st March. Which does in theory mean it could clash. Unlikely, but possible. A secular reading of Easter, or a pre-mischievous Eastern doomsday cult version of the usurped Ēostre is very much about newness and the joys of spring. So if they clash let them clash, if they fall close let them fall close. The more the merrier in this case (not Christmas's case).
Obviously this is very northern hemisphere. But the current date was set in the northern hemisphere anyway, so the southern hemisphere is exactly as neglected as it was previously. Despite how people struggle with timezones and everything is flattening out globally I think we could handle monthzones and yearzones but no matter.
So happy new year, everyone.