When it comes to the ‘new year,’ most of us have it all wrong
Boy, do those Iranians have it right or what? For real: The people of Iran know what’s up.
And thus begins my Rosh Hashanah column, which is probably a terrible way to start such a thing. I mean, here I am, writing about the Jewish new year, one of the holiest days on the Hebrew calendar, and I’m kicking it off with a compliment directed smack dab at Iran, a country whose leaders have said, more than once over the years, they’d like to see Israel wiped off the map.
So yes. I will admit: An odd way to start the piece.
But it’s not just my fellow Jews; Iran has us all beat, at least in one regard: When it comes to the “new year,” the Iranians — and the Iranians alone — have it right.
Why? Because their New Year celebration — Nowruz (literally, “new day”) — begins at the exact moment of the vernal equinox. In short: It starts the moment spring begins. Which makes all the sense in the world.
So not only is their New Year’s celebration timed better than Rosh Hashanah, it’s also timed infinitely better than ours and the rest of the countries that utilize the Gregorian calendar, which, up until a moment ago, I thought was the “Georgian” calendar (moral: I’m still an idiot). I mean really: The middle of winter is when we choose to celebrate the new year? When it’s freezing cold, when everything is dead, when the days are shortest, when we spend roughly 13 minutes each morning debating if we should scrape the ice off the windshield or just sit in the freezing car while the defroster does the job?
It feels wrong, right? The new year should be a time of renewal, growth, and sundresses and not a time of listening to the sound of the windshield wipers passing over the windshield ice and my goodness why is the defroster taking so long? (By the way, this isn’t going to be a Rosh Hashanah column as it turns out. This tangent has taken me too far off. I’m untethered. Like the George Clooney SPOILER ALERT death scene in “Gravity,” which, by the way, is the worst scene in movie history. Why? Because it doesn’t take into account basic laws of physics. He wouldn’t float away. By letting go of the rope, he’d pretty much just stay still. Furthermore, if Sandra Bullock just gave him the slightest tug back toward their ship, he would’ve floated right back to it and lived. Stupid. Anyway …)
Anyway, many southeast Asian countries are close to Iran in the “doing new year’s right” department, with mid-April being a time of celebration in such countries as Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
Laos. I’m in Laos now in what I intended to be a column about Rosh Hashanah.
I suppose I should at least try and circle back to Rosh Hashanah, which began Wednesday night and ends Friday at sundown. The reason is falls around this time each year is because it marks the God’s creation of the universe along with Adam and Eve, which, biblically speaking, is, you know, pretty important. So there’s that. At least that’s an A-1 quality reason. I guess God does his best work in autumn? I don’t know.
But I do know why us Georg-, I mean Gregorians do it on January 1. Because it’s based on the Julian calendar, which was based on the Roman calendar, and the Romans decided January 1 was the start of the year because that was the day the Roman consuls took office.
So to be clear: We celebrate the new year at the worst moment in time thanks to politicians. It figures.
Annnnnnnyyyyyway …. L’shana Tovah to my fellow Jews, and here’s hoping all you non-Jews with school jobs enjoyed your day off Thursday.