It’s an interesting thing, that we greet each New Year with hopes and aspirations. We like new beginnings, and since time is measured by our calendar, we naturally realize the best time to make a change is when the year seems new.

The funny thing is, we follow a calendar that is artificial. The Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory the XIII, is a calendar that emerged in a period of declining church power. It came on the scene in 1582, and really as a concession by the Catholic Church to those scientists that showed it was “correct” according to the turning of the earth and the movement of the stars. Gregory’s calendar needed to be implemented because, well, the existing calendar prior to it was found lacking.

Before the Gregorian Calendar came into play, the Roman world actually followed the Julian Calendar, which was a calendar that Julius Caesar- yes, that famous military man and Roman deity of a guy- put into place in the Empire in 45 B.C.E. in an effort, of all things, to depoliticize the calendar. Evidently prior to his calendar, priests and politicians took the liberty of inserting holidays and holy months into that preceding calendar to win favor with people. Julian tried to make a calendar that was consistent and reflected the cycles of the earth and her seasons.

Julian’s calendar was good, but it erred by dropping a day every 128 years.

Gregory’s Calendar improved on the Julian Calendar, but what Gregory’s Calendar did not fix from prior efforts is the fact that time is relative, and away from our planet, our 365 day cycle has no significance to other bodies in the solar system.

And so our new year has much meaning for us. Spiritually, certainly, Gregory’s Calendar is also known as the Christian Calendar, and as such it has relevance to the followers of Christ, as it was intended from its inception to be dated back from the year of Christ’s birth. However, science suggests that even that easement of time is off, as the date of Christ’s birth became accepted as 3 years earlier than the Gregorian Calendar’s year 0.

It doesn’t matter. A new year, artificially measured in our lives, is as good a time as any to make some goals and to think about changing ourselves. As is a new day.

Tomorrow comes, and life moves forward. It is as good a day as any to celebrate the new ahead and the old behind.

Relatively speaking, Happy New Year.