New year

The Roman god Janus is about to play his annual trick on us. 31 December, the last day of the year, will be followed by 1 January, the first day of the year. We’ve ended up right back where we started. Frustrating, but at the same time reassuring. Janus, after whom the new month is named, was always pictured with two faces, one looking forward, the other back. He is the god of both beginnings and endings. The notion of returning to 1 January has always bothered me slightly, as though all that effort last year was for naught. Indeed the fact that each day of the year is a ‘copy’ of all the equivalent days in previous years seems troublesome too.

It is commonplace that the December run-up to the holiday season (aka the Christmas season) is heavy with festivity. The well-lubricated office Christmas parties of yore were legendary, while at home the domestic calendar brimmed with all sorts of communal gaiety. This all occurred during Advent, which in the old Christian dispensation was a penitential season. Except when among the most devout, I was never able to see that this much dampened the fun. As the marketers now see it, the season of getting and spending stretches from somewhere around Halloween right up to Christmas when, all of a shameless sudden, it’s on to Valentine’s. This leaves New Year’s curiously — sometimes on the coldest night of the year — out in the cold.

Portland, Oregon A new year, whether you follow the Greek calendar or the Latinx, is like the first page in a new diary, its date set by patriarchal theocracy, its entries written in guilt. I’ve always questioned the tradition of making and then forgetting resolutions. I view them as an empty promise of redemption, like the fad diets with which late-capitalist dysmorphia tyrannizes the fat-positive. This year, however, I decided to indulge my curiosity. Yes, dear reader, I have made a resolution. ‘B-b-but how on Earth can Godfrey Elfwick’s holistically beneficial way of living xir’s best life be improved upon?’ I hear you stutter in bewilderment.