Contrary to popular belief, New Year’s wasn’t always celebrated on January 1st. Historically, it had been celebrated at many different times. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice while the Mesopotamians had been celebrating it on March 1st for centuries before that. The custom of celebrating the new year began in 45 B.C when Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar, moving the first day of the year from March 1st to January 1st. The practice fell out of custom in the Middle Ages as it was decreed as “unchristian” due to its supposed ties with paganism. It was then celebrated on 25 December instead. However, it was resurrected when the Gregorian calendar was implemented in 1982 and the date was given significance as ‘the day of circumcision’ following the Jewish tradition of circumcision and naming a child 8 days after its birth. Since then, New Year’s Day has been celebrated around the world and has recently gained considerable popularity in Pakistan too.
Festivities usually include gathering your loved ones and toasting to the upcoming year. A distinct feature of the event is fireworks and general fanfare to welcome the new year. The customs on New Year’s Day vary from country to country. A particularly significant event is of course the ball drop in New York City, which is a long standing tradition and seems to grow in its magnificence every year. In Greece, it is customary to turn off the lights at midnight and eat basil pie. This strange tradition does have a purpose – there is a hidden coin in the pie and whoever finds it is said to have good luck for the rest of the year! And the Greek aren’t the only ones with a strange custom. The Spanish eat 12 grapes at midnight to symbolise 12 months of fertility, and the Canadians and the Scandinavians, despite the extreme cold, plunge themselves in cold water!
These many many customs aren’t the only thing New Year’s has carried with it, it is accompanied by a long standing debate on whether or not the celebration has any use to society at all.
From a Marxist perspective, the festival is utter capitalist ploy. For Marx, mankind has been ruled by ‘historical materialism’, where every phase of civilized society had the fundamental characteristic of class inequality. The poor serfs or labour were made to work long and hard while the landowners and factory owners got the profit. For Marx, history can easily be viewed as an effort of the bourgeoisie to subdue the proletariat and control the means of production. He had predicted that one day the workers would realise this, gain class consciousness, and hence work to overthrow the capitalist structures. Clearly, this hasn’t happened till now. To explain this, neo-Marxists like Althusser devised the Ideological State Apparatus theory. This explains how media, religion and the state all propagate the capitalist ideology so that class consciousness is impossible to achieve. Our consumerist culture is of course a direct result of their efforts. Simply put, we now express ourselves in objects, constructing our identity around what we own and what we can afford. We express love by buying presents and anger by taking away items. We are addicted to buying more and more in order to fulfill the void that capitalism has created. Gradually, we are isolated from our peers because we are so consumed in our self preservation and reach the stage where everything without a price tag is meaningless. We are taught to work hard and continue working until we are able to afford all the luxuries that are flaunted in front of us all day, everyday. From this perspective, New Year’s Day is just another cog in the system. Nowadays, all festivals seem like nothing but capitalist constructs to get us to spend more and more, on food entertainment and gifts, than we did at the last occasion. Taking just one example, the whole month of December is laden with sales and advertisements to get us to spend our savings and end-of-year bonuses on lavish new year parties and dresses. On a psychological level, the significance of New Year’s eve comes from the way it delivers a sense of hope to the masses. The new year seems like an opportunity to bring change to one’s lifestyle, and for some, a chance to start over from scratch – a clean slate! For Marxists, this is merely a clever illusion to give people a false sense of control in their life. Organise your life with new drawers, buy new clothes to revamp your look for the new year, throw away old belongings to declutter your new life and the list goes on. They build a facade of control in our life, and very subtly shift the focus away from the people who are actually in control. We then believe we are the reason for our poverty or lack of success and not the sheer inequality of the capitalist society.
On the other hand, functionalists believe that everything in the status quo has a function. Durkheim founded the theory on ‘value consensus’ of a society. He believes that in order for society to function seamlessly, everyone must agree on the norms and values of the society. Once that has been established, every action of its members is to preserve and pass on those norms. For Parson, a society needs 4 things to function: an ability to adapt to the everyday challenges and changes of time, a collective goal, a mechanism to pass on values and a system to integrate its members. From this perspective, New Year’s eve has a distinct purpose. Festivals can be events to reinforce the collective identity and value consensus of a society. New Year’s showcases the culture and customs of a society, thus integrating its members and also passing them to the new generation. The Spanish custom of eating grapes or the American one of watching the ball drop all serve the same function. It is a moment for people to come together and celebrate their coexistence in harmony. The occasion celebrates life and our connection with one another. We feel connected not only to our society but to the rest of the world as well as we all step back and watch the countdown to a new year. In that moment we are reminded that we are all.
The history of new years is steeped in tradition and custom that is impossible to disregard. Even if it is just another holiday hijacked by the capitalist propaganda, it’s importance cannot be ignored. It is up to us how we choose to spend the day and what significance we are willing to give it. Perhaps the real legacy of new years is its ability to make us reflect on our actions and give us hope for the coming year.