Happy New Year!
I’ve always loved the beginning of the school year–even before I was old enough to go to school. For me, that magical Tuesday after Labour Day was an eagerly anticipated Event, not a dreaded return to enslavement and drudgery. One of my first memories is the sense of betrayal I felt waking up on my fourth birthday to be met with the information that I still had to wait 8 whole months before I too could finally head off with my older brothers to school.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never really understood why the new year is marked by some arbitrarily chosen date in the middle of winter. Really, what makes January 1 all that different from December 31 other than the fact that you have to put up a whole new calendar instead of just turn the page? If not for the hangover and the holiday, would anyone really notice the change?
I think the new year really starts in September. Unlike New Year’s Day, the first day of school is a legitimate marker of a new phase of the year. In September, something new and different happens that marks a clear distinction between the “Then” and the “Now.” “Then” was swimsuits and barbeques; “Now” is school clothes and bedtimes. What could be a more obvious indication of the change in circumstances than that, I ask you?
When you think about it, September, not January, is a time of new beginnings. September is a clean slate; the time when you leave the past behind you and embark on a new phase in your life. It’s all about that feeling of promise and posssibility that courses through your veins and gives you butterflies in your stomach when you think about your new class, your new school clothes, fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, and crayons that have yet to be reduced to naked little fragments smooshed haphazardly into a crushed cardboard box. January is just dirty snow and back to the regular grind.
There are few things more evocative of a fresh start than a backpack filled with empty notebooks and markers that still have all their lids. As a kid, I liked to get out my pencil case and just look at the wonders it held, imagining the exciting year ahead. Actually, I still like to do that; a visit to Staples is better than a trip to the candy store for me. All those gel pens and notebooks and overhead markers to choose from! It makes me positively giddy to contemplate. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to head out and get ready for a whole new year; I have really high hopes for it.