you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 22 points 10 months ago (8 children)

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.

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments