Can we expect 2023 to be different from 2022? What reasons do we have to think that the click of a clock past the twenty-fourth hour of the 365th day of the 2,022nd year in our calendar system will reset our reality and give us a fresh start? Does Jan. 1 mean something, or was it an arbitrary decision of some past potentate?

Apparently, a couple Roman Emperors along the way felt that the month they named for the god Janus, who represented beginnings, should be the start of the new year. Not having to worry about being in the middle of the winter months everywhere else, where nature is dormant and nothing is beginning, they just wanted to honor their god with a symbolic gift. So, this Julian calendar marked time till the fall of the Empire.

Christianity had become widespread by then, and so to make the calendar match their religion, many places observed as the first day of the new year either March 25, when they observed the Ascension of Christ; or Dec. 25, when they observed Christ’s birth.

This was all too confusing so the leader of the Christian religion, Pope Gregory XIII, revised the calendar in 1582. He added leap years to account for the calendar not quite matching the natural movement of the earth which was what the ancients used to mark the passage of time in the first place. Oh, and he decided that Jan. 1 should be New Year’s Day again. Our American colonies were obstinate though. They liked March 25 better and didn’t follow the Gregorian calendar until 1752.

I agree with them, March is a month that signifies new beginnings better than January – at least here. The snow melts, the crocus bloom, nature starts its cycle of life anew. Much more representative of new beginnings than the winters in Western New York.

But this has become our custom. “Ring out the old, ring in the new,” said Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1833, when they actually rang bells at midnight – now replaced with dropping balls and other various objects and setting off fireworks which no longer belong solely to the fourth of July. And we have those raucous noisemakers! Why? To scare off evil spirits and leave them behind in the old year, that’s why. And any holiday is a good excuse for parties, gathering with friends and family, and having a good time so New Year’s is no different.

But those New Year’s resolutions! Why do we wait for one certain day to resolve to make changes to our realities? And then not take them seriously anyway. An ancient rite that began as promises to the gods and then was adopted into some more modern religious practices to encourage good behavior; it has now become one of the customs of our New Year’s celebration.

We all exist in our own reality bubble. We can enlarge the bubble, or we can be satisfied with a cramped little bubble where we feel cozy and comfortable. We can clarify our bubble by choosing experiences that are beneficial to ourselves, to others, to our environment; or we can cloud it with negativity and damaging or wasteful practices, and by accepting hateful messages into our reality.

We all build our own individual reality and we can never truly experience another’s reality, but open-mindedness and empathy will expand our bubble by paying attention to proven facts rather than drummed up conspiracies, searching for ways to make things better, making logical conclusions, being understanding of the realities of others. Our bubble doesn’t pop on New Year’s Eve. We don’t get to start a brand new one. There’s no New Year’s tradition that will change what we’ve done through all the previous ticks of the clock. But just like every moment of every other day of the year, we can keep looking forward to the time we may have ahead of us to work on improving our reality and make the most of it.

It is good that we have a holiday to remind us to make those improvements, though. New Years is symbolic. It is celebrated differently by us than it was in the past, but it has always meant something important throughout history, and should be regarded with that importance in mind now. Life goes on, life leaves one entity and enters another, the essence that we are all made of continues.

Death and birth, continual renewal, the striving of man to be better, the striving of all life to survive. It is clear that the meaning of Jan. 1 is deep, and versions of the celebration of renewal and looking forward have existed back to ancient times.

Wishing you a Happy New Year represents much more than the changing of a calendar page or the changing of the numbers on a clock. It’s a big wish — that your reality in the coming 12 months will be a good one, and the goals you may have set on that first day of the year will be achieved, each and every day, one day at a time.

Susan Bigler is a Sheridan resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com