Jim Taylor’s Weblog

Sunday January 1, 2012

Hanging the year on a mistake

By Jim Taylor

The turn of the seasons
        Linking the New Year to the winter solstice would make sense. At the winter solstice, the steady decline of the noonday sun halts; it starts rising higher again. Days start growing longer again.
        The cycle of life could begin again.
        New life itself would probably not emerge until spring – which is, no doubt, why the celebrations of the new year in Celtic and Wiccan circles coincided with the spring equinox.
        The sun is also our source of life. The total supply of energy available to us – to all life – is what falls on the planet from the sun.
        All the renewable energy sources you read about are, in fact, solar. Winds rely on the heating effects of the sun. Biofuels like ethanol, biomass sources like wood, depend on plants that use photosynthesis to store solar energy. Hydroelectricity is possible only because the sun causes water to evaporate from the oceans and fall on higher ground.
        Even our fossil fuels are surplus solar energy captured by our evolutionary predecessors, millennia ago.
        Tides, admittedly, are not caused by the sun. But if there were no sun, frozen oceans would have no tides.
        Unfortunately, New Year’s Day does not actually correspond with the winter solstice, which occurred ten days earlier.

Differing traditions
        Other calendars diverge even more dramatically from a true solar year.
        Regions and religions that still use the Julian calendar – devised by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. to correct the faulty calculations of previous calendar makers – celebrate New Year’s on January 14.
        The Iranian calendar and its derivatives, the Baha’i and Parsi calendars, set their new year, Nawruz, by the spring equinox. Sikh and Hindu religions tie the New Year to the sun entering the imaginary constellation of Aries, in mid-April.
        The Islamic New Year moves around, like the Jewish and Chinese New Years, because they are all based on a lunar calendar, which has to be constantly adjusted to coincide even remotely to the solar seasons.
        The Jewish New Year will come at sunset on September 16 this year. The timing of Rosh Hoshanah depends on Passover, which in turn is connected to the Spring equinox.
        And Koreans, apparently, have two New Year’s Days a year – one borrowed from the western calendar, and one based on their own lunar calendar.
        Confusing? You bet!

Refusal to admit error
        New Year’s Day reminds us that we humans tend to fixate on our creations rather than on natural phenomena. We set up systems – such as a calendar that fixes New Year’s Day on January 1 or any other date – and then treat them as immutable.
        For example, David Suzuki speaks about living on a finite planet. There is only so much land, only so much water, only so many molecules of oxygen. Human effort and technology cannot increase those quantities.
        But his detractors say, “What about the economy? David, you’ve got to face reality!”
        The economy, retorts Suzuki, is not reality. It is an imaginary construct, an idea, a concept. We invented it; we can change it. But, like our calendars, the system takes precedence in our thinking over the reality that all life on this planet depends on a yellowish ball 93 million miles away. Everything else is secondary.
        New Year’s Day would make sense on December 21. Or on March 21.
        But the present date for New Year’s Day is utterly meaningless. It persists only because we humans refuse to admit that we occasionally make mistakes.

=====================================
Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
        Please tell your friends about these columns. To send comments, to subscribe or to unsubscribe, or to request permission to reprint, write [email protected] Be sure to include Soft Edges or Sharp Edges in the subject line, so my spam filter doesn’t delete your message.
=====================================

Your Turn



INSERT LETTERS

ABOUT MY BOOKS, ETC.

I have a few copies of a book my father wrote exploring Christian theology through Christian art.
        The problem with art, of course, is that it cannot put an abstract concept on canvas. An artist cannot paint an Incarnation or a Resurrection without putting real humans, in real situations, into the picture. The expression, therefore, has to be grounded in a particular culture and society; the infinite and universal has to be represented in finite terms.
        My father – who once took art lessons from members of Canada’s Group of Seven – spent much of his life after retiring as principal of the Vancouver School of Theology, seeking out the ways artists through the centuries had attempted to deal with this dilemma. I’m probably biased, but I think that in examining the ways art portrays theological concepts, he explained those concepts better than most theological texts.
        The book is Seeing the Mystery: Exploring Christian Faith through the Eyes of Artists, by William S. Taylor, 94 pages. There are only about 20 copies left in the world. Most of the illustrations are in full colour.
        If you would like a copy, write to me – Jim Taylor, 1300 6th Street, Lake Country, BC, Canada, V4V 2H7.
        Unfortunately, I can’t send these out on the honour system, as I do with my biblical paraphrases. I will have to charge $30 Canadian to include postage, paid in advance.

=====================================

*****************************************