Happy Pagan New Year?
For many Pagans Samhain is the Pagan New Year. That feeling isn’t universal by any means, there are some Pagan groups that celebrate the “New Year” at Beltane, and I’d be willing to guess that there have to be at least a few groups who celebrate it at Yule. World wide there are dozens of “New Years” ranging from the well known Chinese New Year to the Buddhist Songkran April 13-15. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year (always 163 days after Passover) and the Russian Orthodox Church holds to the Julian Calendar and celebrates the new year on January 14. (I assume that there’s an “astrological new year” out there too, but since I’m not a believer in astrology it’s not something on my personal radar.)
For most Americans and Europeans the new year is celebrated on January 1, and despite being a Pagan, that’s generally when I celebrate it too. I like the party, and there’s a distinctive cultural shift at the time of year as well. The Christmas stuff finally comes down and most of society takes a figurative deep breath as it recovers from the bustling holiday season. Celestially, January first makes little sense as the start of a new year, but it’s where we’ve ended up in the Western World, and I’m not one for big battles.
In ritual, I play lip-service to the idea that Samhain marks the beginning of a new year, and I probably do it because it’s generally expected in Pagan circles. My Samhain rituals this year and last opened up with the line: “We gather here tonight to celebrate the passing of the Old Year and to welcome in the new.” The Celts who originally celebrated Samhain used that night to mark the new year, so putting those echoes into my own rituals is a bit of an homage, but I’ve never made a New Year’s Resolution on Samhain.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/panmankey/2013/11/happy-pagan-new-year/