Rebecca Tucker
‘A more practical new year comes at the beginning of autumn’
Ah, fall. The season of leather boots, cozy sweaters and knit scarves. It’s not just Pumpkin Spice Latte time; it’s time for walking through leaves as summer’s green canopies whither and die, for eating more root vegetables than you can conceivably stomach, for carefully assessing your bank account since Christmas is just around the corner and ... oh god, does that mean it’s about to start snowing?! Ah, fall. It’s easy to look at the third season in the calendar year, which officially kicked off on Sept. 22, as a sort of bridge between the reverie of summer and misery of winter. Fall is beautiful, but its splendour — the colourful leaves, the bounty of the harvest, the crisp air — is actually contingent on death, as nature shuts down in preparation for the big chill. There’s a letting go that comes with autumn, yes, but there’s also a starting over. Autumn brings cold, but it also brings a renewed energy; as the stifling head of summer subsides, so too does our heat-borne relaxation. In the fall, we get moving; we always have. So while the lunar new year may begin on Jan. 1, a more practical new year — the point in the calendar for planning, productivity and, if you’re so inclined, reinvention — comes at the beginning of autumn.
Which, depending on who you ask, either happens at the Autumnal Equinox, or the Monday after Labour Day weekend. One of the main reasons why autumn stands in as a better symbolic year-starter than New Year’s Day is because, from a very early age, it has acted as an annual starting pistol for an alto- gether non-Gregorian year: the school year. Summer is the only season that we purposefully truncate, relegating its existence ostensibly to the months of July and August, because for most of us, the first and strongest independent notion of an annual calendar we form is tied to when school ends, and when it begins. On that calendar, the terminal points exist in late June and early September. So the school year fosters in us the notion that June is a time of year when things end — exams wrap, final projects are turned in, friends are bid farewell before the break — and September being the time of year when it begins again. Those two months in the middle are sort of a writeoff, reserved (at least until summer jobs come into play) for fun, frivolity and relaxation.
And truly, there is science to the notion that autumn is the season of greatest productivity, while summer is the opposite — no wonder we keep it so short: we aren’t getting anything done. In 2012, a group of Harvard researchers found that bad weather positively influences productivity in the workplace, which makes sense, because we are less distracted by the ability — if not the desire — to get outside and enjoy ourselves when the air is cooler and the skies are more grey. The researchers also determined that “There is a significant gap between people’s general beliefs about the effects of weather on their productivity and the actual effect of weather on their behaviour,” which is to say that the overarching idea that sunny skies and warm air are motivators is incorrect, unless the type of motivation we’re thinking of is the impulse to stop working and get outside.
That’s not to say that the break in the weather that accompanies autumn doesn’t foster a greater desire to spend productive time outdoors. Indeed, fall marks the year’s last gasps of lengthy daylight, as nights grow increasingly longer and the sun shines with decreasing frequency. It’s easier — and safer — to exercise outdoors when it’s not stiflingly hot, and those piles of leaves aren’t going to walk through themselves! Autumn has also, historically, been a time of year for agrarian productivity, as the year’s bounty is harvested and spring’s crops are planted; on fall tables, we celebrate the end of a year of pastoral work, and fortify ourselves for the beginning of a new one. Thankfully, for the most part, this no longer comes with the silent dread at months of turnips ahead.
September, additionally, sees the release of the fashion industry’s most traditionally significant tomes: the September issue, spearheaded by Vogue and followed in suit by every fashion mag worth its muster. These thick, glossy publications not only indicate the beginning of a serious shopping season, but suggest through the importance they place on overhauling one’s wardrobe that in the fall, more than ever, you may reinvent yourself.
Winter, with its precious few daylight hours and low temperatures, fosters a predisposition toward hibernation, which in humans can manifest itself as anything from sleeping late and eating lots to seasonal depression. Spring is for awakening, cleaning and, erm, flinging. And summer is for putting that all to rest. The only think missing from this great cycle of falling asleep, waking up and slowing down is starting in the first place. This, of course, happens now.
And anyway, there are so many different calendars in coexistence, and only one — the Gregorian calendar — that says the new year begins on Jan. 1. According to the Jewish calendar, the New Year took place a couple weeks ago, while the Chinese New Year isn’t until mid-winter. The Thai New Year takes place in the middle of spring, and there are several Indian new years, depending on where in the country you live. The unifying notion across all these new years is the idea of a single day to reflect, refresh and — spiritually, or at least in some sense philosophically — begin anew. So if you’re a bit bummed out that summer has just wrapped and winter is on its way, take heed: you have a full year ahead of you. Get busy.