Starting the Year in Spring
- lin buckner
- Mar 20
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 21
Does anyone else wonder how little sense it makes to celebrate New Years Day on January 1st, right in the dead of winter— not long after the winter solstice— when most symbols of rebirth and renewal point to spring, when things are coming back to life and beginning anew?
Winter is a time to pause, to reflect, to turn inward. A time to seek the warmth of our homes and families, as we ponder the ways we want to move forward when the sun comes back out, when we have the gift of a new season of opportunity to venture out and reengage with the world outside of our warm shells.
Do you ever wonder why so many people’s New Year’s resolutions fail in only weeks? Could it have anything to do with the fact they are trying to celebrate renewal and initiate growth right in the midst of a season of dormancy, when nothing is becoming or growing, only waiting for the right time to spring forth? They are trying to ride a wave of momentum that hasn’t even swelled yet.
Doesn’t it make more sense to celebrate the new year in Spring? Wait, didn’t we used to? Wait, what?
What do i mean by this?
At some point, we must have marked the beginning of the year sometime in the spring, most likely March and the spring equinox. How do we know this? Well, even without looking too deeply into the history of it, the most obvious, yet overlooked, clue might be the names of our months. Often the truth is hidden in plain sight.
We all know what an octagon is, right? It’s an 8-sided polygon, like a stop sign. Well, how come October is the 10th month of the year? Or is it? Shouldn’t it be the 8th month of the year? “Oct” is 8, not 10. That might just be a weird anomaly if “sept” didn’t mean 7, “nov” didn’t mean 9, and “dec” mean 10. Feeling bamboozled yet? I am.
That alone should be enough impetus for most people to question their whole reality, but there are so many other things that point to the fact that things are not what they appear to be, and that there are many more than one world we can potentially live in.
The ancient practice of astrology also begins in the spring, with the first sign of Aries. Many government and business renewals are in the spring, and so is tax time. Even Chinese New Year is closer to spring than not, coinciding with the first new moon of the year.
There are so many things that point to the idea of our timelines and frameworks being altered, that for the sake of brevity here, we will move onto the ‘what this means’ part of our day, and you can explore further on your own if you’d like.
There are several points to be made here, which is why I brought any of this up in the first place. The first being WTF, which we’ve dipped into a little already.
It’s easy enough to see that most things conform and revolve around the cycles of nature. The seasons themselves attest the regularity and patterns implicit in nature. Renewal and rebirth begins around the spring vernal equinox, so why would we not celebrate a new year then?
Well, we did. Until certain figures through history altered our calendars and timelines, notably Caesar and his Julian calendar, which many attribute to around the time of 45 BC. Later, in many areas, this evolved into the Gregorian calendar by about the 1580s, which is what is widely used today.
There is so much to say about the how’s and whys that certain figures throughout time have pushed us off the timeline where we coexist with nature into something more to their liking. The “why” is very much up for debate.
Some say control, some say to separate us from harmony with nature, and others argue there is something even darker at play, but ultimately, many modern people have no idea why we do the things we do, just that the next holiday is coming up, and it’s time to buy new stuff and change our home decor.
I wish we could all look a little deeper. Just long enough to let go of all the pomp and circumstance that keeps us disconnected from each other, and the natural cycles and patterns of life as it existed for thousands of years.
Wouldn’t we all be a little better off if we sidestepped the silly never-ending holiday that doesn’t even apply to us parade of bullshit things to buy, and just stripped down to living in harmony with nature again? Let go of the toxic human-created patterns and embraced the perfect patterns of the natural world? Lived more simply and in harmony with one another and Nature? Maybe it’s just me.
That doesn’t mean you have to give up all modern life and live like a caveman. It means that living in harmony with natural cycles is what your body wants anyway, it is the most authentic way for you to live. It is an innate programming that is not wise to stray from.
Our circadian rhythms highjacked by 2am social media binges. Our constant workaholism sending our bodies into cortisol laden adrenal fatigue. The things we eat not even food, but food-like products that destroy our bodies with chemical toxicity. Most pharmaceutical drugs just synthesized versions of natural things with added disease-causing chemicals sold for a profit. This is the modern life so many defend in the face of stripping down to a simpler way of living.
Many walk through everyday in this mindless timeline of destruction, oblivious that all it takes to shift timelines is the decision to live another way.
Let’s all Be April Fools.
When the shift toward the Julian, then Gregorian calendars, began to take hold on a broad scale, those who still recognized and celebrated the new year in spring in accordance with natural cycles and the traditions that endured for millennia were called “April fools” and mocked because they didn’t conform to the transitional power play at hand to manipulate and control our realities and timelines.
Jokes and pranks were pulled on them to make them feel stupid. They were ridiculed and made to feel they were silly for not doing as everyone else. For not conforming.
Much in the same way “conspiracy theorist” and “pseusdo-science” are used today to demean and de-legitimize anyone who speaks out, or about, a reality that the powers-that-be no longer want to be the main narrative, the term “April Fool” was used to shame and demean anyone who went against the new political and historical narrative being unrolled. Some gaslighting games are timeless, and reused until they are no longer effective.
So if we could side-step the main narrative coming at us through the mainstream narrative machine— the media, movies, coercive governmental agendas veiled as beneficial social movements— we may once again align with a reality that is more natural, harmonious, less toxic, and more fundamentally sane and sustainable.
Nature built us a certain way. It doesn’t matter if you’re a person of faith or science— either we were created a certain way on purpose, or we evolved a certain way to be the most fit to survive our current environment. It is obvious either way that we are not living in alignment with something that works and is sustainable. This reality is making us sick, disoriented, unable to be our best or most authentic selves.
A reality aligned with technology is not the way we were designed, or evolved. We are natural creatures. Regardless of how we got here or by what mechanism it happened, it is apparent that we have to take our health, our well being, our very sanity and existence, into our own hands and become functional models on an individual level for how to move forward collectively in a way that is sustainable and survivable, or the tunnel to a better day could eventually close up on us.
Be an April Fool. Align with the natural world. Mother knows best.
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