I heard a great deal of to-do from the village just on the south-western tip of my domain the other night, and it all seemed to culminate in a countdown of sorts.
"Ah," I said, "another new year!"
I had to communicate with my advisors regarding what year it had become, as there is no universal consensus. They generally agreed that the Western, or dominant, world celebrated the birth of "2009" last Wednesday night.
Now, the way we go about with new years here on Earth really does perplex me. 31 December? What is 31 December? It's a week after Yuletide, I suppose, but that as well was set on an arbitrary date - why, it doesn't even coincide with the Winter Solstice! Of all the days in the year where something indicative of the Earth's movement around the sun occurs, they decided on a day that happens about a week-and-a-half after the darkest day of the year!
Now, the Jews have a good idea – their New Year starts at the end of a lunar cycle, and it starts around the time things are going from warm to chilly. Or perhaps we could take inspiration from the get of the Persians, and celebrate the new year on the Vernal Equinox, which seems to be what most ancient cultures were aiming for anyway.
I personally favour the method they use on Andowan. Ah! Now there's a realm where new years make sense! Firstly, their calendar splits into thirteen twenty-seven day long months, each of these months containing three nine-day long weeks. There are eight seasons, too, instead of four, each of them forty-four days long and occurring on either side of an equinox or a solstice - except for every seventh season, which gets a day taken away from it. Every year, New Year's Day comes the day of the Winter Solstice – except in "off" years that occur every eight years when it comes the day after.
That is an efficient calendar, folks! And if elves had their way with this planet, I can assure you it would match or exceed Andowan's own robust sense of time.
Alas! I am not a permanent resident of Andowan, though I often find myself bombarded with magnificent visions of its history, and taunted by its punctuality. But I must make do with planet Earth, with its bewildering and inaccurate solar calendar, and noteworthy dearth of elves.
Anyway, happy new year to those of you who have chosen to celebrate it. As you might have guessed, there were no New Year's Eve festivities in the August Wahnsinger compound. No, the lemmings and I were scouting a pack of invisible trähl-beasts, thought to have gone extinct in this dimension some 400,000 negayears ago! They have reappeared on my property, perhaps as a result of the quantum and horological experiments taking place there, and I came quite close to capturing evidence of their existence when the revellers in that village started making their ruckus.
I shall bide my time, but vengeance will be swift. Happy New Year's, indeed...
Sincerely,
August "It's Not a New Year Until the Sun's Position Rises Above the Equator" Wahnsinger
Recent Comments