Eggscape Artist
Cgthominator

It’s all nonsense, of course, this notion of marking years. Nothing actually ends in December or begins in January, nothing really changes; the planet just continues to rotate. The practice of designating days and months and years was created as a convenient system for allowing people to better organize religious, agricultural and administrative events. That’s all; the rest is codswallop.

Even the idea that the year begins in January is a sham. March was the first month of the Roman year…or at least it was until the year 153 BCE, when it was decided to begin the year in January. Why? March…named for the Roman god Mars, the god of war…was when the weather allowed the military to begin campaigning. The Roman year began when the armies could set out to subdue their enemies and conquer new lands. The first month of the year was changed to January in order to allow the leaders of Rome a couple of months to prepare for their military campaigns.

Nothing changes at midnight. The world does not begin again ab ovo, as if from a newly hatched egg. Not really, not really. But humans have an innate need for waypoints on any sort of journey, including the journey through life. The arbitrary demarcation of the year gives us an opportune point in time to reform or transform ourselves. The notion that the world changes at midnight is nonsense, no mistake. The notion that we can change at midnight…well, that’s up to us.

Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work