Janus ushers in New Year – 2013

By Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa

Roman God Janus

“Haste ye back, we love you dearly
Call again you are welcome here
May your days be free from sorrow,
And your friends be ever near.
May the paths o'er which you
wander
Be to you a joy each day
Haste you back, we love you dearly
Haste you back on friendship's way.”
Andy Stewart's Scottish New Year song.

The eternal cycle of the universal system, dominated the total processes of earth for billions of years. Just a brief moment ago, in terms of the earth's age, Homo Sapiens (the wise human) appeared on this planet. During a fleeting fraction of his 50,000 year – presence here, he has tried to tame time by imposing divisions he has evolved.

In this feeble attempt to assert his dominance over nature, he calculated time in hours and days, that in turn accumulated into weeks and months – eventually yielding years.

These units still follow the awesome pageant of the alternating seasons and the apparent movements of our own star – the Sun.

These man-made years have their specific ends and beginnings, determined by the mores and the norms peculiar to each individual culture.

Tradition

Currently some seven billion humans occupy the planet earth. But, their celebrations of the New Year, follow hundreds of different paths. For instance, traditionally, the Sinhala New Year occurs in April. There is hardly any month in which some religion, country or culture, does not solemnise its New Year festivities. Considered this way, almost every day in the year, is a New Year day.

But in the cultural globalisation of the post-industrial era, a new wide-spread cosmopolitanism sprawled over a vast swath of the world. Influenced by the strong international sophistication, that accompanied this potent cosmopolitanism, some indigenous cultures adapted certain rites and rituals of the incoming systems.

That solidly explains how a good past of the global population today, celebrates the first of January as the New Year's day. Almost the whole world accepts the First of January as the beginning of the New Year, unifying the global community.

Roman calendar

According to the Gregorian Roman calendar, the first of January ushers in the New Year. While celebrating our own indigenous New Year in April each year, many in Sri Lanka tend to look on the first of January too, as the New Year's day.

This belief has entrenched itself in a wide-ranging area of Sri Lanka. This acceptance, does not in any way affect the firm traditional loyalty to our indigenous New Year, which has been an irreducible component of our age-old cultural practices.

In the globally utilised Gregorian calendar, the first month is named after the Roman God Janus. This divine being, who has given his name to the month of January, is portrayed with an impressive iconographic feature. He is two-faced.

In addition to his front face, Janus has a face at the back of his head as well.

The ancients settled for this divinity, to initiate the year, because he can see the past and the future simultaneously. Janus is renowned as the God of Beginnings.

When you come to think of it, Janus is not at all bad as a divine presence, to preside over the beginning of the New Year. He can utilise this experience of the past, to direct humanity towards the proper path for a fruitful New Year, which is still in the region of the future. When we focus on the current social scenario in Sri Lanka, we find that the people of Sri Lanka are agog and raring to go, since a mood of heightened joy has gripped the folk-psyche as never before. Reasons are many for this development. The life-and-death pessimism, unleashed by the rumours of the end-of-the-world gloom, is totally gone.

The speculation aroused by the unprecedented techni colour rains, do not pose a threat any more. The peripatetic night-lights that hovered above some locations in the island, can now be viewed with detachment and objectivity, as they are no longer valid as supernatural portents of the end of the world on December 21. But, a possible predisposition for uninhibited New Year carousing, is restrained to some extent, by the residual privations of the helpless victims of natural disaster. As we meet the New Year, with befitting festivities, the suffering of these masses rendered homeless by the rains and the uncontrolled floods that came in their wake, has to be predominantly present in our minds.

The New Year's day, that has now got embedded in our own culture, has endowed upon local revellers, certain ingredient that are not quite indigenous in origin. A staple in the revelry, for many urban sophisticates, is drink-fuelled dancing to welcome the New Year. In many a western culture, the collective imbibing of drinks is a mandatory aspect of the New Year celebrations, as hallowed by their own established traditions and inherited social dictates.

Rituals

Several of the rituals associated with Hogmanay – Scottish New Year, seem to have in some instances, a strong kinship with our own indigenous New Year (Aluth Avurudhu) rituals. “First-footing” is part of the Hogmanay practices.

This implies the arrival of the “first New Year visitor,” who is generally robust, male and bears gifts of food, drink and fuel-primary essentials of life. In Hogmanay, I am told, drinking is a centrally important ritual, because even the person who falls down in a heavy drunken stupor is upheld as a worthy exhibitor of New Year vigour.

Here, I think it apt to quote (by memory of course) somelines written by the British poet Louis MacNeice:

“Laird of Phelps spent Hogmanay,
declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact,
and found one foot over.”

In New Year day's revelry, drinking, dancing and carousing were considered the right things to do, because when you indulged in these pleasures as the New Year dawned, at midnight, you will be assured of a whole year of joy and untrammelled happiness.

Pleasure aspects

But placing that much weight on the pleasure aspects of the New Year's day, does not seem that much characteristic of our own, long-cherished indigenous New Year values. While going along with the New Year day's rituals and rites of passage sanctioned by this cosmopolitanism, those moderns who relate to them should do well to be mindful of the spiritual aspects emphasised by the Sinhala and Hindu New Year festivities that arrive in April, as an integral part of Sri Lanka's sacred cultural legacy. The brand new year, that will be ushered in by the two-faced God Janus, on January 1, 2013, will mark the dawn of a special era of peace and harmony, as it arrives at the end of a particularly turbulent period in recent history. What it will have in store for us, both individually and collectively, will largely be our own making. All of us in Sri Lanka can chant in unison, our traditional national prayer:

“Devo vassatu kalena – Sassa sampatti hetuca
Peeto bhavatu lokassa – Raja bhavatu dhammiko.”

(May the rains come in time, ensuring bumper harvests. May the world be tranquil and may the king be righteous).