Leaving Yanguary Behind..

A lovely new friend of mine was pondering the pile-up of stress that comes with the traditional New Year on the 1st January. She realised that in the West, the year started too soon.  New Year’s resolutions kick in before the 12-day Christmas feast is over. And the dark, Yin time of the year gets hijacked by the Yang energy of doing and productivity. Yin-uary becomes Yang-uary. 

The traditional seasonal rhythm of dying back and patiently waiting for life to stir is disrupted. People get ‘dug up’ too soon before their roots have had a chance to charge up. 

When we go back to the Indigenous English calendars, then Imbolc is the first stirring of the life energy, and that doesn’t come until the beginning of February. Likewise, the Eastern New Years start with the second new moon of the year, which this year falls on 17th February when the earth snake turns into the fire horse. 

So why do we uproot ourselves from the hibernating darkness 7 days after the Winter Solstice and force ourselves to start anew six weeks before the Earth is ready for us? Well, because of work, of course. 

Before the Industrial Revolution, villages and country communities in Western Europe bobbed along to the Christian calendar, which was roughly aligned with the Pagan festivals and the seasons. Christmas sat on top of the Winter Solstice. Easter is aligned with the Spring Equinox. There was Mayday, which approximated Beltane, and then there was a dizzying array of Saints Days and Feast days, which (according to the Cornish surrealist Ithell Colquhon) were almost always aligned to sun or moon goddesses. 

But the need for a punctual workforce that worked in regimented factories rather than in seasonal fields led to the rigidity of the clock and the working week. And now the working week has metastasised into a boundaryless soup of microdemands from our phones, our internalised to-do lists, from the insane workloads that modern capitalism has normalised. Think of those poor Amazon drivers working until Christmas Eve and post office workers collecting returns on Boxing Day. 

From a pre-industrial working year punctuated by leisure, saints’ days and fallow weeks, some of us have one day off in 365. 

***

It’s now mid-February and the beginning of the Asian New Year. 

I now find myself in Kenya for a couple of weeks' holiday with friends who live out here. And currently, while they host another visiting family, I am staying in a treehouse built into a baobab along the edge of Takaungu Creek. 

Across the tidal estuary is the little village of Takaungu, which is predominantly Muslim, which means I am charmed awake and asleep by the overlayered calls of the muezzins from various minarets. A polytonal experience that pleases me immensely.

It also reminds me that this new moon and the first finger of the crescent moon mark the beginning of Ramadan. Coincidentally, it is also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. (This is a big coincidence. The last time they lined up was in 1863, and the next time will be in 2189!)

There is, in fact, a dizzying pileup of energetic events in these couple of days. 

Yesterday was the dark moon in February, which marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year in China. Today is also Losar, the Tibetan New Year, which is calculated by a slightly different metric. As mentioned, today or tomorrow is the beginning of Ramadan. And Lent, which is based on the full moon after the Spring equinox. 

Today would be a much better time to start your year than the Protestant work ethical 1st of January. 

So yesterday, inspired by many of my moon-leaning friends in Cornwall, I led a little meditation on the sandy beach behind the mangroves to mark this dark moon portal. Letting go of things for Lent/Ramadan and igniting intentions for the Year of the Fire Horse. 

The Chinese calendar is moving from the Earth Snake to the Fire Horse - the biggest transformation that can occur in that culture’s horoscope. From earthy no-legs, to fiery four legs. And powerful as the Snake is at shucking off dead layers and being reborn after sloughing, the Fire Horse is a very fast, very transformative energy, so it feels good to mark it and make it meaningful. 

The transformation takes a year, so you won’t become equine fire overnight, but if last season was shedding what doesn’t serve us, the next period of time might be about burning through the dross and riding your horse with good intentions. 

So if you’ve been feeling sluggish through January, this might be the more appropriate time to start your new and align yourself with fiery intentions for 2026.