Happy New Year! ... 2010 has arrived.

My prayer for 2010.

"Thank-you for my bliss... I am filled with gratitude for my life, my abundance, my health, my love, for the roof over my head & food in my tummy... I will never take life for granted... I am so thank-ful for this life I lead, for your friendship, for caring... I wish everyone bliss, love and abundance in all forms..." - AprilAnnaBremers

I must admit to having mixed feelings about New Years Eve. Yes, I think alot, sometimes too much. I can't help it, it's part of who I am. So my mixed feelings about New Years Eve are derived from the fact that the holiday is a bit odd as in, how do we define that it is a new year? It's 2010 because we count 365.242199 days a year that begin on Jan 1st every year, but why does the year begin in January? To me it seems a bit odd, it's not aligned with anything that I can relate to. To me it would make sense to start the counting system of days and years from a point in harmony with nature, such as the longest or shortest day of the year.

A year is defined by wikipedia as: A year (from Old English ȝēr; symbol a or sometimes y) is the amount of time it takes the Earth to make one revolution around the Sun. By extension, this can be applied to any planet: for example, a "Martian year" is the time in which Mars completes its own orbit.

But regardless of these feelings, it is lovely to see something, some event in this modern age that brings people together to celebrate and have joy. It's interesting that around the world everyone celebrates New Years Eve, even if they may have their own idea about when the New Year begins (such as China).

So I will end this posting with a bit of history, quoted from Wikipedia.

New Years Eve is the day that is stated by the Gregorian Calendar to be the 1st day of the new year. The Gregorian calendar is the internationally accepted civil calendar.[1][2][3] It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582.

The reformed calendar was adopted later that year by a handful of countries, with other countries adopting it over the following centuries.The Gregorian calendar reform contained two parts, a reform of the Julian calendar as used up to Pope Gregory's time, together with a reform of the lunar cycle used by the Church along with the Julian calendar for calculating dates of Easter. The reform was a modification of a proposal made by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius (or Lilio).[4] Lilius' proposal included reducing the number of leap years in four centuries from 100 to 97, by making 3 out of 4 centurial years common instead of leap years: this part of the proposal had been suggested before by, among others, Pietro Pitati. Lilio also produced an original and practical scheme for adjusting the epacts of the moon for completing the calculation of Easter dates, solving a longstanding difficulty that had faced proposers of calendar reform.

Gregory's bull does not ordain any particular year-numbering system, but uses the Anno Domini system which counts years from the traditional Incarnation of Jesus, and which had spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. That is the same year-numbering system that is the de facto international standard today.

The Gregorian solar calendar is an arithmetical calendar. It counts days as the basic unit of time, grouping them into years of 365 or 366 days; and repeats completely every 146,097 days, which fill 400 years, and which also happens to be 20,871 seven-day weeks.[8] Of these 400 years, 303 (the "common years") have 365 days, and 97 (the leap years) have 366 days. This gives an average year length of exactly 365.2425 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds.

A Gregorian year is divided into twelve months of irregular length, with no regular relationship among their lengths.

Wikipedia goes on to tell us alot more interesting details about the development of the Gregorian Calendar, which I would love to share with you right now but for fear of loosing your attention span, I instead encourage further investigation on the wiki article itself, which you can find here.