We are not alone

Before the New Year celebration, we put champagne in the fridge. With a fine drink that symbolizes fun and a rich life, we want to toast each other cheerfully in the first minutes of January. My younger granddaughters are looking forward to a crazy night. Me and my followers wonder what will be written in the obituaries when our journey is over - "1929-20XX". What number will replace those two "X's"? Nineteen? Phew, good job! Prussian King Frederick the Great asked his guards before charging the enemy: "What is it, boys, do you want to live forever?"

Probably the most universal guy ever, painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, astronomer, anatomist and everything else Leonardo from the village of Vinci wondered why we expect anything at all. He kept a diary all his life, around 6.000 pages were accumulated. In one place it is written: "Seriously waiting for a new spring, then a new summer, a person constantly complains that what he wishes for hesitates to finally arrive, and he does not notice that he is actually wishing for his own dissolution." However, this very desire is the quintessence of all elements that feel closed in soul and body and always hope to return to the one who sent them. But I want you to know, that very desire is the true spirit of nature, and man is the model of the cosmos."

The sage tells us that everyone alive is constantly waiting for something that will make them happy, but time passes and while waiting, in fact, they wish for their death. If so, waiting for midnight to strike on December 31st, we unknowingly celebrate not only a new beginning, but also an end, because now the year will be one calendar number closer when it will inevitably happen to us... What, please?

FIRST OF JANUARY: Only a third of today's humanity considers the first moment of January 1 the beginning of the new year. But everyone alive expects something new. The moment of the beginning of a new year is also related to the religion to which that person belongs. That's why I'm counting believers: on January 2018, 7.591.541.000, there were 2019 inhabitants on Earth. It is estimated that on January 2,3, 1,6, there will be eighty million more. There are 460 billion Christians, 360 billion Muslims, 4,720 million members of the Hindu religion, 2,871 million Buddhists, that's a total of 15 billion people, so this calculation does not include more than 31 billion. Among them, the relatively tiny Judaism is especially mentioned, because Christianity and Islam rest on its foundations, but there are only XNUMX million Jews, which seems to be a negligible statistical error. I am citing these numbers so that we, who will be taking the mentioned sparkling wine out of the refrigerator in a few days, will be more modest, which means that we have a refrigerator, that we had the will and money to buy relatively expensive alcohol and that we intend to open the bottles at midnight on December XNUMX. And the others?

OLD CUSTOMS: The solemn celebration of the New Year for Christians is a relatively new fashion, Christmas is a real big winter holiday close to the short days, it is celebrated in honor of the birth of Christ. It is interesting that in the region of our climatic conditions, regardless of religion, a holiday has always been associated with the proximity of that shortest day, longest night.

Among the ancient Slavs, the sons of the god Dažbog were the twins Ovsenj and Koledo. Ovsenj sees off the shortest night, Koledo welcomes a new one. The memory of the pagan faith began to mix with new, Christian understandings, but carolers in some parts of our country, especially in eastern Serbia and among the Vlachs, still appear today as groups of masked young men who "break into" houses, sing and they ask for gifts.

The old Germans named and welcomed the new year differently in Iceland, the British Isles, in the Scandinavian countries and in European Germany, but since they adhered to the luni-solar calendar with an occasional leap month inserted, it was most often on the night of the first full moon after the shortest day of birth .

Customs are different in the southern part of our continent, because the climatic conditions are different: there is no harsh winter, the shortest day of the year is not interesting, the beginning of spring is celebrated as the beginning of the new year. I came across a creepy legend from ancient Greece: to bless the first furrow of the year, the queen would lie down in it and sleep with a young man. His seed would be laid next to the wheat seed, and he would be executed after that unique night.

Ancient Rome would start a new administrative year on March 15, but in 153 BC it was moved to January 1, when the new consuls would take office. On that occasion, they forgot to change the names of the months, so September remained named as the seventh, October as the eighth, November as the ninth, and December as the tenth month (September, October, November, December), although now they have become the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth.

Christianity counts the new year from the imaginary birth of Jesus Christ, that is why we say that we are now welcoming the year after Christ or the year 2019 of the new era.

LUMPERAJ IN BELGRADE: I found the first information about the New Year's celebration in Belgrade in the magazine "Videlo" from 1850: "Ten members of the city gang, wrapped in bunting, played and played wherever the snow was spread, and that was where the shops were located. richer bosses". For the New Year's Eve in 1890, for the first time in Belgrade, we read about celebrations in taverns with music and female singers, and families who came "from the ancestors" and brought Hungarian and Austrian customs celebrated in houses. Entrance to the tavern "At the theater" was paid for "50 paras per person". The owner of the restaurant "Manjej" advertises: "Pigs and turkeys in the lottery." Donuts with Napoleon. Lumpray in the upper hall, dancing in the lower hall. Music and song without criticism. Milan Bidža, the restaurateur, is asking for a visit." Belgrade gradually began to be a real European metropolis.

I remember the last few New Year's Eves before the start of World War II. Mom was wearing a long evening dress, I was amazed at the neckline on the back, as a ten-year-old I thought it showed too much bare skin. Father would wear a tuxedo. They would go to the New Year's ball.

Decorating Christmas trees brought into apartments began in the 16th century as a Protestant custom, which Catholics initially rejected. Trees have been associated with folk customs for many peoples since time immemorial, in pagan times, burning them was a way to invoke the gods. Orthodox Christianity has adopted the use of a young tree, a Christmas tree, which will be ceremonially burned, from ancient times. Christmas trees began to be decorated instead of oaks in the Rhine region of Germany because they do not lose many needles even in warm rooms and smell so nice.

DIVINATION WITH LEAD: A New Year's custom recorded as far back as ancient Rome is molybdomantia, fortune-telling based on molten lead. Pieces of lead are heated over a candle in a ladle until they melt, then suddenly spilled into a prepared bowl of cold water, where they take on various forms on the basis of which divination is performed, as when reading from coffee or beans. It's funny to me that the European Union, in addition to all its other affairs, this year managed to ban fortune-telling by melting lead, because lead is poisonous.

My father was not of the opinion that such small quantities could be dangerous, my sister and I spent the New Year's Eve of 1941 with him, we also tried divination with lead, but nothing clever worked. I have written about it often before, because it left such a deep impression on me. The pieces of that lead, I said then, reminded me of bullets. That year, my father was killed by German bullets. I'm sorry, you shouldn't be superstitious, my father probably wanted to establish some tradition, to pour lead every night before the New Year.

I have not been able to establish when this method of divination began before the celebration of the New Year in Europe. There is information that it was recorded in Germany in the middle of the 16th century, when lead was increasingly used thanks to the invention of printing.

calendar: The beginning of the New Year is necessarily linked to the use of the calendar. A good part of humanity has long been relying on the Gregorian calendar, which, based on the latest astronomical calculations at the time, was proclaimed by Pope Gregory XIII with his bull in 1582, correcting the inaccuracies of the older, Julian calendar, which is still relied on by the Serbian Orthodox, Georgian and some other churches. That old calendar was promulgated by Julius Caesar, it is used in business relations today and in regions and among peoples who calculate the passage of time differently, based on the sun or the moon or a combination.

Astronomy is a very old craft, without those masters it was impossible to predict the seasons, they marked the arrival and retreat of the waters of the Nile, and thus also when there would be grain, food, and life. It is difficult to imagine life without generally accepted dates.

SANTA CLAUS: The Soviet Union, suppressing everything to do with religion, but aware that it must give its citizens a day of joy, transferred the celebration to the Gregorian New Year, forgetting that in this way years are counted according to the Christian measure, supposedly from the birth of Christ . Sparkling Christmas trees shone, Santa Claus who brought gifts to children was not a communist invention, he has been in Russian fairy tales as the embodiment of winter for centuries. Following the example of the "first country of socialism", the same way of celebrating the New Year was adopted by all the countries of "real socialism", including Yugoslavia after the victory in the Second World War.

Since the Coca-Cola company already in 1931 created Božić Bata for its winter advertising figure as a friendly fat man with a big white beard in red clothes, who brings gifts in a sleigh with reindeer harnessed to it, that figure conquered a good part of the world, it is reported even in Japan or China, without the vast majority of the population having no idea that he and lighted Christmas trees are a German Protestant invention.

My generation remembers that New Year's Eve began with Tito's speech on the radio, later on television, Christmas trees were more often placed publicly, in businesses, houses, and over time they became bigger and more beautifully decorated. It was also celebrated in schools - on the eve of 1948, I organized, wrote the text and directed for the entire Civil Engineering High School in Novi Sad with my class - it was celebrated in companies, and more often in bars and restaurants, as a hundred or more years before, those 1890 in the Belgrade "Manjež".

NEW 1441. YEAR: Muslims will welcome 2019 on September 1, not at midnight, but at sunset, it will be the 1441st year for them. It is a very important holiday, because it celebrates the hijra, the day when the messenger of God Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina with his family. As far as is known, it was July 16, 622 according to the Gregorian calendar. Since then, the so-called Hijri calendar is also valid for Muslims, which is not based on the sun, but on the moon, so it is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar. That is why the major holidays of Islam fall every year on different days according to the world's customary time calculation. On the day of Hijra, good Muslims should reflect on whether they have done more good than bad deeds in the past year and repent for all the bad things they have done to other human beings. It is emphasized that it is not a day of celebration, but of remembrance.

NEW 2561. YEAR: Buddhists celebrate the 2561st year after the death of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who left a luxurious life and began to teach the people as Buddha, which means Awakened One in Sanskrit. The day of the beginning of the New Year is not unique for all Buddhists, it can be January 1, and it can also be the day of the first spring full moon - which is also the Chinese New Year - or the fourth full moon of the lunar year. It is celebrated in different ways, I saw a movie where believers or those who just stick to tradition come to monasteries. Monks sit on beautiful carpets, rich food is offered to them, but it is strictly vegetarian, today we would say vegan. The believers settled on more modest carpets. The central place on that day in the temple is occupied by a hill of sand, because individually we humans are as insignificant as a grain of sand, but together we are strong, we can be great. The monks start eating, followed by everyone else. When they are fed, the monks recite the Buddha's words, then music begins, dancing and a tree is passed around on which bills are hung as a gift to the monastery. At the end, the monks sprinkled clean water on the small Buddha statues that the believers will take home.

CHINESE NEW YEAR: Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival, will be celebrated on February 5, 2019. The year of the Earth Dog ends and the year of the Earth Pig begins. The Chinese calendar is very difficult to understand, I couldn't figure it all out, it is calculated in time periods of 60 lunar years and 10 celestial branches based on the old luni-solar calendar, which nowadays is only used to calculate holidays. In order to understand Chinese timekeeping, and to some extent other "foreign" calendars, you need to have completed high school mathematics, so I'm not even going to try. It is easier to recount customs.

Preparations for the celebration begin two weeks before, the house is cleaned with bamboo branches, red lanterns are hung, good wishes are written on the front door in golden letters. In the evening, the family dines on fish and chicken, monetary gifts are distributed in red envelopes according to financial possibilities, and sweetened rice is sacrificed (burned) to the God of cooking, so that he will be favorable to that house for the whole next year.

The New Year must be celebrated with the family, which is why the Chinese tend to travel home wherever they happen to be. In 2017, more than one billion journeys were made by plane, train and ship. It should be celebrated for eight days, but the People's Republic of China officially recognizes only three non-working days. Actually, it marks the end of the hard work of the whole last year, there is no other reason. Dinner is, of course, rich.

Just before midnight, everyone leaves the house, but immediately after midnight they return and open all the windows so that the happiness of the new year can enter the home. On the second day, the lion dance is played, with the sounds of numerous, differently tuned drums and gongs, people masked as lions move. It is a scene we know from some American movies, because this custom has also been transferred to the Chinatowns of American cities. Then the fireworks are lit. The Chinese are the inventors of fireworks. About 90 percent of all fireworks in the world are produced in China. The sky is shining, people are happy, but when the holidays are over, they will start working again and producing, learning and researching probably more than all the other nations in the world.

ROSH HASHANA: The Jewish New Year is called Rosh Hashanah, which means "head of the year." The last time on September 10, 2018, the 5779th year since the creation of the world was celebrated, the next one will be on September 30, 2019. As I already promised, I will not even try to get involved in the calculation of the Jewish calendar, nor whether the "world" is something older than those five thousand and a half years. Whoever believes in this will not want to hear any arguments against his belief. Even the various currents of Judaism celebrate that holiday differently, for one or two days, but it is always announced by blowing the shofar, it is a wind instrument usually made of ram's horns, but it can also be made of antelope, it must not be made of cattle, because that would be too reminiscent to the heresy when they worshiped the golden calf. That sound should remind of the unity of the "chosen people" with the Lord, whose name is taboo. When, according to the Bible, Moses asked him his name, he said: "I am he that I am", abbreviated to YHVH in Hebrew letters, which we, who are not afraid of the regulations to never say it, read Yahweh or Jehovah.

As with all other celebrations of the beginning of the new year, even among otherwise modest and discreet Buddhists, Jews also eat and drink well, and certainly apples and honey according to tradition.

VOODOO NEW YEAR: Just one more piece of information. Vudu also celebrates the New Year, usually at the beginning of September. Voodoo is not just a superstition like sticking needles into a doll representing an enemy persona, it is a syncretic religion with 60 million adherents, four times as many as there are Jews. It originated in West Africa some 500 years before Christ, and slaves brought it across the Atlantic, mostly to the Caribbean. They believe in one god, but he is so powerful that it is impossible to address him directly, so various demigods - demons - mediate. The center of the celebration is a stone whose color predicts what the new year will be like.

I just wanted to say that we, who will take the champagne out of the fridge some day, represent barely a third of humanity. Let's wish our loved ones a happy New Year, let's dedicate a moment in our thoughts to those who celebrate their holidays differently or who have no strength or reason to celebrate anything.