The point isn't arbitrary. It's the winter solstice. It just drifted a bit due to history and stuff.
this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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It's Xmas that highjacked the winter solstice. New year used to be the start of spring (March) then the Romans decided to acknowledge the first 2 months, and then changed the start of the year to January so they could elect some officials to govern Spain instead of waiting an extra 2 months. It's about as arbitrary as it can get.
https://youtu.be/RrGHtl5qJfk About 24 minutes in to skip to ^
Is the fact that the start of spring is 2 months after the solstice arbitrary? Seems a pretty clear cause and effect.
But honestly we should make a new calendar that starts on the spring solstice, is subdivided by solstices, and doesn't have weeks (I just don't like them).
It'd still be a mess anyway. How do you subdivide your two year halves? What do your months look like? If they still exist.
Assuming you use equinoxes too, you can split your year in 4... Except since you've got 365 days to split, it will never be a perfect split.
And turns out the Earth doesn't care about synchronizing rotation and revolution and the year is actually about 365.24 days. so you still have freaking leap days every four years, except not every hundred year, except yes please every 400. Or whatever rule you make to fix the inevitable deviation.
I mean we define year as being from one spring equinox¹ to the next, no matter if it's 365 or 366 days. So if we made next year 1 it would be from 20th of March 2026 14:46 UTC to the next 20th of march 2027 20:25 UTC (The first day of the year could be day 0, the last of the old year but still also in new year, to account for the fact that it's not midnight.). The months would be replaced with quarters(seasons), ending on: June 21, September 23, December 21. Every year the dates would slightly shift because of the way orbits work, but there is no leap year math.
The first quarter, spring, has 93 days, the second, summer, 94 and so on. These will probably be subdivided a multitude of ways. Quickly sketching I found 6 * 4 * 4 - (3 or 4) which seems to work, though I'm naturally draw to base6 due to it being highly composite. This makes 24 days in a quarter-season. A nice analogue to the hours.
I think this calendar works better because it doesn't attempt to add any human control over a completely chaotic system: Earths orbit speed and rotational period. The underlying principle is chaotic and humans should build systems that are build on top of this natural disorder. By attempting to define and control disorder you must create so many convoluted rules (Like the leap day rule). Our calendar is an example of the human desire to "fix" nature to our own way of life instead of leaning to coexist with the natural disorderly processes that govern our lives. It's the same mindset that gives us the blatant disregard for the natural resources or climate.
This is a rather anarchic position but that's because I cannot help but inject anarchic rhetoric into my thought process due to so much of the way we live has been in blatantly build using archic concepts, even the calendar is dripping with it.
¹: Accidentally called it solstice sense I forgot there's a different word.
Have you looked in to the French republican calendar??
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But it's the middle of summer!
Ssh! If the northern hemisphere people figure out how awesome summer Christmas and new years is we'll never get rid of them.
The fact that the other hemisphere exists did cross my mind, but I decided to ignore it because clarifying would have reduced the quippy nature of the comment.
The comic is also saying that the entire world lives by the Gregorian calendar but that isn't true as well.
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But it isn't. Winter solstice already happened before Christmas. New Year, in our current culture, is 100% arbitrary.
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I don't see how this is so heavily downvoted...? It makes complete sense that humans (by far most of which live in the northern hemisphere) would celebrate that the darkest days have passed and that we're heading from a dark and harsh winter towards a promise of spring. Coming from the north, I can definitely testify to the fact that you feel in your whole body that the days start getting longer.
The fact that the exact date is slightly off basically amounts to a rounding error, and making a point out of it is just pedantic.
I was going to point out that if it isn't, in fact, the winter solstice, then it is arbitrary.
But I decided to start the new year without the pretentiousness and pedantic proclamations
Shit, if we all do that, it's gonna be real quiet around here.
We'll just enjoy the silence.
♪All I ever wanted. All I ever needed. Is Here. In my arms. Words are very unnecessary, They can only do harm.
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Humans just need a reason to party now and then. And that's completely fine.
Yeah, all this unnecessary pessimism gets really tiring...
I'm slowly coming around to the theory that people on Lemmy are less happy than much of the rest of the internet because a disproportionate number have been aggrieved by mod actions on reddit subreddits. Many of them probably have a point, but I wonder how many of them were actually banned for being wet blankets nobody wanted around anymore.
Of all arbitrary things we celebrate, this is probably the least idiotic.
This is actually, factually incorrect. We used to celebrate winter solstice and this is directly caused by and deterministically occuring on a certain (albeit slightly blurry) point of our orbit.
This should be higher. The days have become longer which means the humans will not die in a dark cold forever winter. The warmth will return, the crops will have another season and the lengthening of daylight hours is the harbinger of future good tidings.
The creator of the meme is in fact the idiot who doesn't realize his entire physical sustenance is dependent on this cycle.
Edit: I'm an idiot who didn't realize I'm using some weird sorting algo and apparently winter solstice was already highly upvoted.
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Thanks, Neil Degrasse Tyson.
Subscribe me to Neil Degrasse Tyson facts.
Here’s like 20% of them
He gets a lot of shit for this and I do think he's a pretty annoying guy, but I just now developed a head canon for this where he does it on purpose whenever someone he personally knows is being a narcissist. And so it's like a super petty passive aggressive way to piss them off. I could get behind that tbh. Can you imagine? Every time your annoying brother calls and asks to borrow more money, you post some quote about greed to your huge social media following. Lol.
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It's not that far off the solstice.
Well, it has an actual meaning. The date is arbitrary but the event isn't.
The same way that our life's depend on the cycle of day and night, they also revolve around the stations. Cycles of abundance and scarcity, of heat and cold.
Years are points of reference for historical reasons.
To be clear, we are mostly idiots but some non-idiots calculated the days in a cycle.
The date is arbitrary but the event isn’t.
It's a bit off the mark of the Winter Solstice, which is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.
So I wouldn't even call it arbitrary. It's highly relevant to a person on Earth, waiting for the day when nights start growing shorter and we can look forward to a spring harvest season.
I might argue that the problem with the New Year is that we don't also celebrate the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year) and the two Equinoxes.
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We are the part of the universe with consciousness so if we decide it isn't arbitrary then it isn't.
Besides I like new years eve, it's a good time for reflection, resetting my motivation and optimism and an excuse to party all night
Problem with inviting Mercury is they don't create any atmosphere
Life must be miserable for this person.
Anyone who celebrates anything that isn't relevant to me personally is an idiot.
Sure, let's shame everyone for grasping at a somewhat political neutral occasion to spark a little joy in their lives!
100% arbitrary
Sure, if you ignore the expansive history of humans' measurement of time and the cultural impacts on it. That's just looking for reasons to be a dismissive ass, though.
New Year's is literally the only holiday I have never disliked
Round numbers and fireworks? Countdown me in!
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Hey that guy is having fun! Get him!
You see Mercury, this is why no one invites you to anything.
Earth is celebrating another year closer to the death of the Sun.
do we really need a justification to get together and have fun?; or to have a day off and do fuck all? for those that rather do that instead?; or anything in between?
people just want to have a reason to celebrate
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