4707

Happy New Year!

Today is the start of the New Year according to the Chinese calendar; it is year 4707, the year of the Ox.

Obviously, there are other calendars than the the Gregorian, or International Calendar, the one we use in the Western Hemisphere. I am fascinated by these different ways of marking time, and I will try to explore the various other New Years as they occur in the different cultural or religious calendars.

After all, the idea of a fresh start is always nice, even when it occurs in September.

The sun and the moon have risen and set for perhaps billions of years, at least from a scientific perspective; homo sapiens or some forbear has populated the globe for millions of years, and yet it is only within the last 5,000 circumnavigations of the sun that we humans have given the years numbers, or names, or both.

The origins of the Chinese calendar, or Yin calendar, go back to at least 1700 BCE and the Shang dynasty and perhaps much further, to 4,000 BCE. It is based on the rotation of the moon rather than the sun, so it is a lunar calendar, although the months are named after agricultural seasons, so technically it is lunisolar, if that's not too confusing (New Year is also known as the Spring Festival in China).


The Chinese calendar has a twelve-year cycle, each year named for one of the animals of the Chinese zodiac; each animal symbolizes a different temperament, not unlike Western astrology. The twelve years of the cycle coincide with Jupiter's orbit around the sun.

The first day of the lunar new year occurs on the day of the second new moon that follows the Winter Solstice. Every few years there is a thirteenth month inserted to keep the calendar on track.

Being born in a particular year is said to affect your temperament, so that a person born during the year of the Ox may be patient, hard-working and self-sacrificing, but can be inflexible.

Earlier I said that the Chinese calendar is called the Yin calendar; this begs the question, is that Yin as in Yin-Yang, the well-known symbol?

The answer is yes. Yin represents the moon and Yang the sun in the symbol. The Yin (moon) side is the darker side; ancient Chinese used an eight foot stick, the position of the sun in the heavens and the length of the shadow cast by the stick to map the entire path of the sun during a solar year. Each position of the shadow was marked on a circle; the dots were connected, and the side with the lengthier shadow was colored dark. The resulting pattern of dark and light originated the symbol.

The small circles in the symbol mark the shadow at the Summer Solstice, at the top, and the Winter Solstice, at the bottom.

So how do Chinese clebrate the New Year, or Spring Festival? In much the same way that celebrations are held the world over: with firecrackers (to ward off evil spirits) and lots of good food. Red paper lanterns are important, because the color red is a positive and festive color in Chinese culture. The traditional Chinese dragon is danced through the streets.

This year's celebrations may be a bit dampened, because, not surprisingly, this year of the Ox is not being regarded as an auspicious one, at least from a financial perspective ("bullish" metaphors seem not to apply.) Perhaps this one will turn out to be better than feared; perhaps the patience, hard work and self-sacrificing qualities of the Ox may save us yet.

After all, the person best positioned to affect the year's outcome was born in 1961, another year of the Ox: Barack Obama.