Think about how you’ve felt these first few weeks of 2025 once the revelry dissipated overnight. Awful, right? Social media is rife with explicit or veiled cries for help as people all around us succumb to New Year Despondency. Oh yes, it’s a THING — that depression which outweighs anything the year-end brings, because wrap-up regrets have at least the relief of constant partying.
So, where do the start-of-year blues come from, when hope and resolve should hold sway? Firstly, anything that follows our end-of-year food-and-alcohol-fuelled festivities will be anticlimactic. When the shimmer of the prosecco and the party people have dimmed, you find yourself in a vacuum, prone to bothersome thoughts crowding in, causing your mood to dip massively.
It springs equally from what you expected the New Year to deliver. When toasting the incoming year on its eve, did you feel a surge of hope for the immediate future? Did you think you’d wake the next morning to an unexpected fortune in your bank and peace-on-earth headlines? Did neither materialising leave your spirits in tatters? Well, next time, keep Emily Dickinson’s words in mind — hope is the thing with feathers — beautiful and uplifting but also fragile and gossamer. You cannot lean on it.
You made resolutions too that you’re well on your way to relinquishing, because it’s human nature to wander off course. But you’ll upbraid yourself for failing nevertheless, and nothing quite matches our disappointment in ourselves; gnawing at us night and day.
I made no resolutions beyond trying harder to eschew sweets, nor expected anything miraculous from a mere marching forward of the hours, and yet, I too feel a discernible deflation, a blunting of my appetite for 2025. Oh it’s not that I don’t want better and brighter for this year, but I won’t be surprised by the contrary. I mean, what can happen that hasn’t in the last 365 days? A change in the scale and setting of cyclical events maybe, but nothing more fundamental.
Then, there’s the dreary weather at this so-called time of rebirth; if the New Year is supposed to signal revival, who in their right minds decided we should usher it in when the planet is at its most lifeless?? When all we encounter are barren trees and fitting temperatures for a mortuary, and darkness, darkness everywhere (not in Australia but who’s counting ‘em), it takes a colossal leap of faith to be able to tell ourselves to block out the evidence of our own senses, and embrace the belief that the new year will bring new possibilities.
The festive cocoon in which we’ve survived these harsh months has come apart with the planet at its worst, and our minds respond by spiraling into despair, aka SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). All because of a catastrophic spot of calendar-planning by some ancient Roman jobsworth!
I blame Percy Shelley too, who exhorts us to trust that “if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” Yes, far, far behind! Making a determined effort to lift the gloom is commendable, but this chuck-your-chin-up-and look-ahead philosophy can also lead us down blind, inescapably disappointing, alleys. Cheery mantras can only hold off the inevitable for so long, and your payback is the deflation you tried to forestall. For these, and other psychosomatic reasons, we can often end up in hospital in the bleak midwinter, when we’re emotionally down and our immunity is low.
I propose we ditch this frigid, echoing gulf with its unhealthy, upending impact. No, I know we can’t change upcoming weather patterns (actually we have been, but not for the better). Instead, let’s carry on exuberantly celebrating the New Year till the weather relents, gilding us with sunshine and greening the earth, injecting our spirits with a much-needed natural booster, as ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, the first ever self-care guru, would’ve advocated.
But, on top of the stacks more cake and camaraderie, let’s officially push the New Year to the Spring!
This is an old concept, with many cultures kickstarting their calendar when the world around them recalibrates, imbuing people with the energy to reinvent as well, as any sensible society should. From the Chinese New Year in February (still a tad too early, if you ask me) to the Bengali one in April (viz. springtime propah, thankee), our year could so easily begin, firmly in step with the planet’s natural rhythms.
Instead of being a mere footnote to Christmas, the New Year should be given the glorious weather and lush springtime setting it so deserves, hogging the spotlight of its own making. Nor would Christmas lose any of its oomph if uncoupled from the New Year; allowing us to celebrate it for longer, revelling in yet more mulled wine, tranches of tinsel, and brightly wrapped surprises. Singing carols till Chinese dragons whoosh into our lives, harnessing whose energies, we are catapulted into the Spring, and nolengurer shondesh offerings! At which point, nature’s own bounty makes up for the winding up of festivities, and the blues slink away with greater dismay than we had time to feel.
So, don’t stop chanting “happy new year” just yet, belting out ‘Auld Lang Syne’, or hugging strangers in a flood of fellow-feeling. Till we can agree to fix the calendar, incantations of goodwill must keep the fires burning.
