Geenschaap

New year traditions

Another tradition which i never knew the meaning of (other then starting a new year calendar) or the origins of, is the new year tradition. According to Wikipedia, the origins here in the Netherlands apparently came from the "Joelfeest", the winter solstice celebrations, which lasted 12 days. The noise making at new year seems to originate from the practice of scaring away evil spirits with the chiming of (church) bells and other noises. This i was never told and had to look it up on the internet. So all these years in the past i celebrated new year without knowing anything about it, other then changing the calendar. And i wonder how many people do know. I assume that very few know and that makes it a meaningless tradition. So why do it? Just because of eating and drinking in abundance? You can do that every day of the year. Because of the law the only time that people are allowed to use fireworks is at new year, so that is not possible on other days. But that too is a silly tradition, where people buy a few very expensive fireworks which last for five or ten minutes or which, in most cases, lasts for only a second. That ten or twenty euro sky-rocket goes up in the sky, explodes and gives a second of lights. Not to mention the firecrackers.

For animals it is a horrible time. Here in the Netherlands the banging of firecrackers starts days before new year and on new year's eve gets worse. Our two cats are not happy and sometimes don't know where to hide. One of our dogs is not really bothered by it, but the other is a nervous type and wants to bark at every noise from outside he hears. We try to train that dog to ignore the banging with some success. As he's still young, maybe someday he'll learn to ignore it as the other dog does. As we do not stay up to wait for new year, we go to sleep at an earlier time with the dogs in their crates, which for them is security in their den. Last night at twelve, when the noise began, i was awakened by it, and the nervous dog was making some noises too. He made some soft barks, squeaked a bit and went quiet for the rest of the time it was noisy, which doesn't last more then fifteen minutes here. The other dog didn't make a sound. My wife just slept through it completely! Is it worth it to annoy other people (on the last day of december there had been more then 60.000 complaints about fireworks) and scare animals? Is it worth it for a tradition that is meaningless - just eating and drinking and making a lot of noise? It isn't worth it to me, and certainly not for animals.