James Baquet Anywhere years are counted (which is virtually everywhere), there is some recognition of the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Celebrating of a New Year is more-or-less universal, but how those celebrations are held, and when, varies greatly from culture to culture. Perhaps one of the oddest aspects of being a foreigner in China is the stretch of time over which one says “Happy New Year!” We may start in the last days of December, and--depending on the date of China’s Spring Festival — may still be saying it late in February. By the way, few of my Chinese friends knew how the date of the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year was chosen. “Just look at the calendar,” they said. But in fact, the date is (with some minor variation) the second new moon after the winter solstice. As this moment is fixed by the motion of the sun, China properly has a “lunisolar calendar,” and not a strictly lunar one, as is often said. And so, the date of the Spring Festival is roughly within two weeks of early February, the time called lichun, or “start of spring,” in Chinese — hence the name Spring Festival. Although the Jan. 1 Western date and the varying Chinese dates are widely celebrated, there are many other days designated as New Year’s Day as well. One of the most interesting is the start of the Muslim year. Because that year is 11 or 12 days shorter than the Western (Gregorian) year, the date changes every year, and can occur in any season. Thus, it is truly a lunar year, not anchored to the progression of the sun through the seasons, as the Chinese New Year is. According to the scholar of religions Mircea Eliade, the idea of any New Year celebration is a sort of “resetting of the clock.” Although modern people consider time to be linear, it is also, in some ways, cyclical, repeating the seasons and going back to “one” every year. This important phenomenon has spawned a number of other observances, which we’ll look at over the next few articles. Vocabulary: Which word above means: 1. fastened, affixed 2. given birth to 3. just about, nearly 4. moving in a circle, repeating itself 5. the shortest day of the year 6. moving in a straight line 7. of the sun 8. acknowledgements or celebrations of an occasion 9. of the moon 10. practiced everywhere | 