Don’t be a slave to time in the new year

In the new year, I hope we don’t become a slave to time and instead create time on our own for a better future.

KIM SEUNG-JUNGThe author is an archeologist and professor at the University of Toronto. The early Roman calendar had March as the beginning of the new year, because cultivating season begins that month. In other words, people then believed that the new year begins when everything revives. Then at the end of the eighth century B.C., the beginning of the new year changed to January, when Numa — the second king of ancient Rome — named the month after Janus, the god of beginnings.

In 46 B.C., the Julian calendar, a solar calendar based on astronomers’ studies, was first adopted. After that, Jan. 1, which returns every year after 365 days — or 366 days every four year — was designated as the beginning of the year.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII revised the Julian calendar slightly (the difference between the two calendar systems is 11 minutes per year) and made the Gregorian calendar, which more accurately follows celestial movements. This calendar system is what is still used today.

It is truly amazing how the solar calendar system, which managed to supplement the length of a year that does not fall to an integer, could be successfully used for 2000 years. Looking back on the complex and various calendar systems before the Julian calendar, the success of the Julian calendar is remarkable. In the case of ancient Greece, which used various lunar and solar calendars for various purposes — such as farming, politics, religion and social occasions — the process of systematizing time was hardly scientific.

The people of the 21st century — descendants of the Enlightenment — look at the concept of time from the scientific perspective without any biases. But the political history of mankind is the very history of conquering time. Both Julius Caesar who revised the calendar and his successor Augustus who used the obelisks from conquering Egypt to build a gigantic sundial in the middle of Roman cities politically subordinated time itself to make people’s daily lives uniform.

Tao Te Ching, a Chinese classic text on Taoism, says, “The returning movement of Tao, or the Way, is cyclic.” Returning is by no means a simple repetition. New creation is made from returning. In the new year, I hope we don’t become a slave to time and instead create time on our own for a better future.