What if the New Year didn’t start on January 1? Thanks Pope Gregory XIII for helping those of us with orderly minds and real problems with Leap Year for setting the Gregorian calendar. But what if we celebrated the New Year on the Lunar New Year like South Korea? Or China, which celebrates on the second new moon following the winter solstice? Or if we celebrated, akitu, on the first new moon after the spring equinox like the people of Mesopotamia in 2000 BC? * (*thanks Google for all this info.)

Personally, I find January 1 cold, dark, and tiring. The first new moon after the spring equinox when the sun starts coming back earlier, the days are longer, the ground greens up, and the early spring bulbs poke out makes so much more sense to me. I could feel a real stirring of new beginnings from within if we waited until spring. Just sayin’.

And oh man, starting 2025 gently like I aspired to do is not happening quite like I imagined. So far on this first day of the New Year I have experienced all the feels. The dissonance of reports from New Orleans of deliberate violence while watching College Game Day and taking down the Christmas tree is difficult to digest. Today is also my husband’s birthday. It is hard to make holiday birthdays special, but we’re gonna try! We continue to be dismayed by my very sick inlaws and their health journey this season.

But as I said about 2024, I make choices about what to hold on to. I choose to be delighted by texted pictures of my sister and her family in Disney Land. I choose to find happiness in texted pictures from our exchange students’ family skiing in Austria. I choose to enjoy all the likes and birthday wishes sent to my hubs on the book of face and IG. These lovely expressions help me hold appropriate space for those suffering from the ugliness and unfairness of life. I can process the dissonance and respond more effectively when I have room to think and a lens of love to view through.

The world keeps on keeping on—good, bad, or ugly. All we can do is what we can do. Keep doing the next right thing my darlings and Micah 6:8, “what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Regardless of when and where and how you mark the New Year, I hope 2025 is full of good things for you from Jan 1 through Dec 31.

Peace and Love, Marla