There is something a bit odd about New Year's Eve. Why are we celebrating rebirth, renewal, and a fresh start, when everything is cold, grey, and dead outside? It is not exactly an inspirational time to begin making resolutions.

It wasn't always this way. In Judaism, the year begins, not on Rosh Hashanah, as most people think, but actually at the dawn of spring. Many ancient cultures also celebrated the New Year not in January, but in what we today call "March."

The Hebrew calendar, unlike our modern calendar, is intimately connected with nature.

Goethe's early play Götz von Berlichingen (1774) shows how we have been tricked and deceived by the centralization of power. The poem "Mondnacht" (1835) by Joseph von Eichendorff shows, like the Hebrew Calendar, how, in order to connect with nature, we must stand in humility and wonder before her.

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Music: Robert Schumann - "Mondnacht"