This is a bit disingenuous; what's considered the "new year" is usually aligned with the seasons and the passing of winter, which is very much not arbitrary and completely dependent on the tilt of Earth's axis.
this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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I think Brazil and Australia would like a word.
You mean the Portuguese and the English, who brought their traditions with them
From the Sun's perspective, perihelion or aphelion would make more sense, I guess.
By sheer coincidence, perihelion is a few days away at the time of writing, so we could lie to the Sun that this is an early celebration of that.
Of course, this comes with two problems: 1) The common era new year is actually a belated marking of the solstice (much like Christmas a week before). Perihelion will be later and later on average with respect to it due to the procession of the poles, so the lie is going to become more and more apparent over the coming centuries. 2) The Sun might think we're celebrating being far away because we hate it.
New Year's is my favorite holiday. Just gonna chill with a friend with beer, crackers and some chess/video games. My Christmas present from my dad was to go buy some fireworks with him, so I got a bunch of stuff to do at midnight.
Way better than Christmas or Easter or other baloney festivities. New Year's is at least somewhat tangible even tho I do concede, it makes no difference.
It‘s not completely arbitrary. New year is after the shortest day for daylight of the year.
You're thinking of the Winter Solstice, which was on Dec. 21!
I think Brazil and Australia would like a word.
Hey, gotta start somewhere.
In theory, couldn't we use the exact point the Earth is precisely between the sun and galactic center?
technically, everyone's new year is on their birthday.
Fuck you, let us have fun.
Aren't all forms of measurement (in this case it's a measurement of time) completely arbitrary?
In this case I might argue that there are more "natural" points of reference (eg. solstices/equinoxes).
We use political/religious markers instead which are completely irrelevant to the planet's orbit.
I mean, winter solstice is a little more than a week away, I'd say that was probably a significant influence on the designation of end of the year.
The Julian calendar, the predecessor to the modern Gregorian calendar, didn't quite fully account for leap year shenanigans, and so drifted be about 1 day every century. The Gregorian calendar changed the way leap year works, but didn't reset the beginning of the year. It just froze the drift where it was at the time.