Ringing in the New Year around the world 2026

I was just looking at photos of the celebrations around the world to mark the start of the New Year and it struck me how we all have agreed, globally, on this calendar. It wasn't always the case. Just thinking, so no evidence or facts to offer, only my musing this morning 1/2/26 - but peope have used other calendars and other ways to mark the year as we know from archaeological discoveries. Of course, the solstice has been the most famous archaeological and astronomical time marker I suppose. Civilizations from the Americas to Europe have created monuments to mark the Winter solstice which I should say is probably the most resonable way to mark the end of one year and the beginning of another - an agricultural time marker when people depended on crops to stay alive and the winter was a waiting game: Will the things we dried and smoked and salted and preserved last until we can plant and gather again?

Memories of famine are not far from the minds of people or our domesticated creatures like my dog. My dog carries the millennial memories of hunger with her at all times, she is always searching for that morsel. And I was raised right after World War II when people had made gardens in every possible place to grow food during the shortages caused by transportation disruptions among other causes. In South Philadelphia, where I was raised until I was 12, the people had created commuity allotments and worked together with their remembered skills. Below our neighborhood was a now lost settlement called "Schoolhouse Lane" which was the still thriving remnant of a Colonial era swamp reclamation created by German immigrants, off the grid. They had no municipal services and paid no taxes. They raised chickens, pigs, and after having made canals and drained the swamp that was the estuary of the Delaware River in that area, they did truck farming and brought their produce to the city in horse drawn wagons. My grandmother and other homemeakers went out into the alleys beyond the brick row homes and bought produce from these farmers.

My parents put in a truck garden in the backyard of our development house in the 1950's and my father had built a pantry underneat the second story stairs where he and my mohter worked mightily to preserve the bounty from that garden for the winter: stewed tomatoes, breen beans, jellies and jams, all sorts of things in sterilized Ball jars.

Now, I am not quite certain what the New Year means in terms of the civilization in which we live at present. We are so cut off from the sources of our food which arrives continuously all through the year from places all around the world because there is growing season all around the world so there is no interruption for winter.

The New Year means something social now, a re-setting of our lives, a kind of opportunity to start over, start anew. I have to go now but this is something I will ponder all day today.

Happy New Year (whatever that may mean to you!) wrightj45@yahoo.com A thought: maybe I am slow to get this but I suppose the big glittering ball dropping at Time's Square to mark the New Year is a symbol of the sun! Interesting!