I Don’t Celebrate New Year's. My Body Doesn’t Believe January.
My calendar lives in my body, not in a countdown clock
I don’t celebrate New Year’s.
On December 31, I stay home. Partly because I’m a homebody in the most unapologetic way, and partly because the neighborhood turns into a war zone of fireworks, and my pets deserve better than being terrorized by the neighborhood’s annual audition for an action movie. My pets hate it. I hate it. So I do what I always do when the world gets loud and weird: I retreat.
I go into my sanctuary. I make it small and safe. I journal. I read. I go to bed early like someone who understands that sleep is sometimes the most rebellious spiritual practice available.
This is the part where someone always tells me I’m “missing out.”
I’m not.
I understand why people love New Year’s. I understand the relief of saying, “That part is over,” and the sweetness of believing something fresh and new can begin. I’m not here to take away anyone’s champagne or joy. If you love the countdown, keep it. If making goals in January lights you up, do it. If you need a moment that feels like a line in the sand, keep it and hold it tight.
I’m writing for the people who feel failure in January because their body doesn’t want to sprint, optimize, or “level up.” I’m writing for the ones who try to manufacture motivation in the cold and end up feeling guilty, sluggish, behind, and vaguely defective.
January has never made sense to me as a beginning.
Midwinter is a season of inwardness. The light is thin. People are still carrying holiday stress, sugar, family residue, and financial whiplash. Many of us are also carrying grief that got louder in December, because that’s what grief does when the world insists on sparkle. The collective nervous system is fried, and then we’re supposed to decide what we want to accomplish for the next year as if we’re robots with fresh batteries.
My body has never agreed to that plan.
It wants to remain in hibernation in January. It wants quiet and the kind of rest that doesn’t come with a self-improvement lecture. It wants to be left alone long enough to hear its own thoughts again.
When I look at the natural world, it’s doing the same thing.
Winter is recovery and regrouping. Winter is the season that says, “You don’t get to rush a living thing.”
So every January, when the internet starts yelling about planners and vision boards and “becoming her,” my inner wisdom responds with a deeply spiritual phrase:
Absolutely not.
Also, the January 1 New Year is not some sacred, ancient rule that fell out of the sky fully formed. Humans decided it, and humans have moved it around multiple times.
For example, England once began the legal new year on March 25, a day known as Lady Day. That was the official start of the year for centuries, until the calendar change in the 1700s shifted it to January 1. Catholic countries began this tradition only a couple of hundred years earlier, thanks to Pope Gregory XIII.
March 25 makes more sense to my nervous system than January 1 ever has.
Even if you don’t care about the history, I love what this reveals: the “start” of the year is flexible. It’s cultural. It changes. Which means you’re allowed to change yours, too.
You are allowed to stop forcing your body to pretend it feels “new” in the season of deep inwardness.
My year begins when the world begins to wake up, and when my nervous system stops acting like it’s stuck under fluorescent lights in a crowded store.
I start feeling myself return around Imbolc, which lands at the beginning of February and is traditionally tied to the beginning of spring in the Gaelic seasonal cycle. Imbolc is associated with Brigid and with themes like returning light, early signs of life, home, hearth, and the first stirrings after dormancy. It’s beginning to make sense, isn’t it?
Imbolc is not the full bloom moment for me. It’s more like the first crack in a sealed door.
Somewhere around that time, my body starts to lean forward. My mood steadies. The fog thins. I want to clean and declutter, both my surroundings and my mind. I start getting ideas that feel doable. I feel a return of appetite for creating. My energy starts to behave like it remembers it belongs to me.
Thinking back, I think I’ve been like this my whole life, long before I had language for any of it. The wheel of the year didn’t create this rhythm in me. It simply handed me a map that matched what I already knew.
And in my house, the natural world has an opinion too.
Because Timmy wakes up.
Timmy is my Sonoran desert tortoise. He is about the size of a 12-inch dinner plate, old-dinosaur-looking, and extremely committed to his personal schedule. He lives in a two-level condo burrow in the corner of my yard, like a tiny armored landlord.
He goes down for brumation in the fall, then one day near the end of February or the first week of March, he emerges.
No pep talk or resolution. No “this is my year” caption. He wakes up because the world is waking up.
I live in the desert, so this happens earlier than it does in many places. It can already be in the 80s by then. People start planting for the next harvest. The yard starts changing. The whole place has that subtle hum of something returning. Things begin moving again.
Watching Timmy come out every year has become my favorite reminder that timing is not a moral issue. He’s not lazy in January. He’s not “failing to launch.” He’s doing what living things do.
My body moves with it.
I have a lot of thoughts about New Year’s resolutions, and I’ll try to keep them from turning into a full rant. No promises.
A lot of resolution culture is built on the idea that you are a problem to solve.
It’s unrealistic. It’s body-shamey. It worships productivity and feeds consumerism. It makes you feel like you need to buy a whole new personality in the form of a planner, a supplement stack, a gym membership, a “clean” eating protocol, and a ten-step morning routine that requires waking up at 4:45 a.m. and having the moral confidence of a cult leader.
Meanwhile, real humans are out here barely holding it together. They are grieving. They are caretaking. They are burned out. They are healing. They are surviving winter. They are trying to stay alive in a world that never stops demanding more.
January isn’t some magical portal. It’s a date on a calendar.
If the calendar is useful to you, great.
If the calendar is bullying you, we’re done here.
If this is landing for you, subscribe. I write for the people who want the sacred without the performance, and the truth without the motivational yelling.
Now is probably a good time for me to say this: If you love New Year’s, keep it. If the countdown makes you feel hopeful, and the ritual of it brings you joy, and you genuinely enjoy setting goals in January, I’m not here to take your party hat away.
I’m here for the people who feel weird and guilty every year because they don’t. The people who feel like their bodies are still in winter, while everyone else is screaming at them to sprint.
So here’s what I do instead of New Year’s.
I reflect. I get quiet. I let myself feel what the last year actually did to me. Then I wait for my real beginning, which arrives in layers.
Imbolc gives me the first spark. The Spring Equinox gives me the full green light.
Astronomically, the vernal equinox is a moment when the sun is above the equator and day and night are close to equal length, and in the Northern Hemisphere, it usually falls around March 20 or 21. (It will be March 20th in 2026).
Energetically, it feels like the world has turned its face back toward life. The light changes in a way my body can feel. That’s the point when planning starts to feel supportive rather than coercive. I can look ahead without my nervous system throwing a tantrum.
That is when my year begins. It is when I feel ready to plan in a way that doesn’t feel like self-punishment. When I can see clearly and can commit to something because my system has the capacity to hold it.
The season supports me.
The world is moving again. Plants are waking up. Animals are waking up. People are planting. The air itself feels less heavy.
In my body, it’s the same. I want to begin. I want to build. I want to make meaning. I want to choose what comes next. And I want to do it without pretending I’m a machine.
If you love January beginnings, I mean it, keep them. This isn’t a purity test; it is an invitation to stop forcing yourself into a timeline that doesn’t fit you.
A calendar can be a tool, yet it doesn’t get to be your boss.
A small ritual for the “I’m still hibernating” people
If you want something simple to do, try this. No props required. No aesthetic. No pressure to feel inspired.
Find ten quiet minutes in your sanctuary, whatever that means for you. A corner, a chair, a parked car, the edge of your bed.
Then write three short lists:
What I survived this year
What I learned
What I’m done carrying
Then, choose a feeling for your 2026. Write one simple sentence, “In my next season, I want to feel ________________.”
That’s it. No reinventions or personality overhauls. Just a small, simple practice.
If it feels good to you, close it like a spell. Put your hand on your chest and say: “I begin when I begin.”
And if you want a different kind of new year, one that starts when the world starts waking up, I’ll be right here with you. Probably in my sanctuary. Probably reading. Probably side-eyeing January.
My year begins when it begins. Yours can too.
Love today,
Heather 🌸