The Meaning Of: The New Year

The New Year: Just Another Day.*

Written by Fogy. Improved by an editor who doesn’t get tired.

Yep. Once again, Fogy arrives with an inconvenient view of what this is all supposed to mean.

In ancient times, celebrating the passage of time made sense. The seasons mattered. Survival depended on knowing when to plant, when to harvest, when the floods would come. Time was not symbolic—it was existential.

Fast-forward a few millennia and we now sell overpriced tickets to stand in a freezing crowd at Times Square, staring at a descending ball, pretending that something profound is happening.

And that’s the crux of it.

Early societies followed priests and shamans not out of blind faith, but necessity. These figures understood patterns—rudimentary astronomy, cycles of nature, the slow logic of the heavens. The masses didn’t need to understand how time worked; they just needed to obey it.

Time, after all, is a human construct—created to impose order on a universe that refuses to offer it freely. Night and day alone were not enough. The sky was too complex, the seasons too erratic, the consequences too severe. So we built calendars. We named months. We crowned custodians of time.

And, inevitably, power followed.

Those who claimed mastery over time also claimed authority over labour, ritual, fear, and hope. Tragedies, floods, droughts—all explained through arcane calculations and divine alignment. Wealth accumulated. Obedience followed. The flock bleated willingly.

So yes, I’ve flirted long enough with humanity’s ancient theatrics. Time to step down from the pulpit and say what the New Year means to me.

Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.

Why?

Because the New Year is an invention—useful once, ceremonial later, hollow now. A ritual preserved long after belief in its foundations has evaporated.

Midnight does not strike once. It ripples endlessly around the globe, indifferent to fireworks and countdowns. The planet doesn’t reset. The universe doesn’t pause. Nothing begins again.

And yet—we pretend.

We would do far better to celebrate every day as New Year’s Day.

Waking up. Still here. Another night survived. Another light seen. That is reason enough.

So do we have little to celebrate—or far more than we admit?

Celebrate each day, not one invented moment a year, and life quietly becomes something better.

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