It was funny how I woke up this morning, and my first thought was “This is New Year’s Day, the first day of a new year.” As far as the calendar goes, that makes sense. In the bigger view, it misses the mark.
Our culture thinks this is a new year. It was a conscious decision made many years ago so that people could get along with one another. It makes for coordination, especially for commerce between cultures, but it is not a true reflection of what is going on. For many cultures, it is just another day on the calendar, nothing new or special. We base our calendar on the fiction that the earth has returned to the same spot relative to the sun as it was 365 days ago. It is a nice idea, but it isn’t correct.
We measure our year by counting 365 days, but it actually takes the earth closer to 365 1/4 days to go around the sun. So we have to insert an extra day every four years and call it a leap year. If last year, 2017, had been one of those leap years with an extra day, today would be December 31 and tomorrow would be the beginning of a new year. But it isn’t.
Some cultures choose to ignore the 365 day routine and determine the length of a year by cycles of the moon. Their “year” needs major adjustments because the number of lunar cycles don’t correspond to the length of times it takes the earth to circle the sun. Our culture adjusts the discrepancy by a day, they adjust by a month.
Even the way we measure days is not a true indication of what is happening. Whoever figured out how many seconds should be in a day didn’t get it exactly right, and adjustments have to be made from time to time. Even that is not totally predictable. It keeps changing. Even with our modern technology, we just don’t know how to take into account all the factors that determine how much time passes in a day.
It is even something of a fiction to think of the earth returning to the same spot around the sun once a year. That spot is constantly changing, we never occupy the same spot in space. The path of the earth around the sun is in a constant wobble, some of which we can measure and predict. We can take into account that there are at least three big, gross variables in that wobble. There are many other more subtle variables caused by the gravity effect of other planets, other solar systems and other galaxies. There is the added effect caused by the earth slowing down as it makes its path around the sun and as it rotates.
It is quite a bold stroke of imagination and consensus to determine that this is the beginning of some kind of new year. Things around us, including the earth, are constantly changing. There simply may be no accurate way to determine the passage of time astronomically. Our best shot is like playing Pooh Sticks, throwing sticks into a moving stream and watching them float by. So we do our best and live with a known fiction of exact measurement.
Even the revered Einstein didn’t get it right. He opted for a static universe where there were no gross changes. He chose to ignore what his mathematics told him, and instead went with the prevailing idea that the universe was static. He fudged his math to make it come out consistent with his misconception. Of course, he later regretted this error when the astronomer Hubble provided observations of a reality that was not at all static.
Our little planet is constantly changing what it is and where it is. It is impossible to determine that it ever returns to the same spot. All the reference points are constantly changing. Even the world-wide GPS system needs constant adjusting, so we can determine where we are with some degree of accuracy. We have decided on measuring sticks for time that are neither accurate or static. Our days are not the same length, the time around sun is not measured in an even number of days. We throw sticks into the spacetime flowing all around us and use those sticks to decide where we might be.
I actually like to observe that this is not really the beginning of a new year, except for people who need to know when to go to school, show up for work or keep a doctor appointment. I like to think of it more as a new bend in a constantly turning, very unpredictable white water river. It is another pulse in a long and uncharted surge of adrenaline.