As Christmas marked the birth of a child so the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus marks a new beginning for that Christ-child, the start of a ministry, the beginnings of something beautiful and something good. Baptism is new life, a new day. And, as such, is an appropriate way in which to begin a New Year. 

The Dominican Paul Philbert once remarked that we should never let the waters of baptism dry from us. We should always, in other words, keep ourselves irrigated by the waters into which we were baptised.