Happy New Year!

No, not that one, silly, that comes in June.  Or September.  Or December.  However you choose to count through the solar seasons.  But from today, here where I am, there’s going to be more light than darkness.  That feels like a good place to start counting. 

 I sometimes wonder why our calendar year, and most of its dependencies, starts at, or around, the winter solstice rather than the spring equinox.  It depends where you live, of course.  Today should probably be New Years’ Day here in Europe and points north.  In Australia, you’d have your New Year in September.  Near the Equator, it wouldn’t really matter, because you don’t have the same kinds of seasons, and just the one equinox.

I was once accused of being a Dane, which might be true.  I think I’m a Norman, actually, because of my surname; but Normans were Danes or Vikings or something, weren’t they?  So that would account for my sensitivity to the solar seasons, and more especially to my precise delineation of them.  I suppose I’ve chosen the equinoxes and solstices as convenient points to regroup.  We need markers.  We’ll all choose our own, depending on our latitude and its weather and all the other ingredients in our personal mix.

More importantly, though, the financial year starts on 6^th April, just as the forsythia comes into full bloom.