USING THE CALENDAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20762, 3 January 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

USING THE CALENDAR.

AT THE NEW YEAR.

BY MATANGA.

The man who makes mock of the calendar lias a good case, as good as the one to bo made against fashion in dress—but no better. Custom has played a large part in making this way in which we wear time, cutting and fitting its years and months and weeks, with trimmings of gala days. Our life would be ill clothed without it.

In our fashioning of the calendar we follow, in the main, it is true, a pattern set in tho utellar sky. The sun, with its apparent motion, has given us our days and years, and to the moon we owe our months, as their name tells, and our weeks as well. But tho fabric of our reckoning is cut with much regard to convenience, and care for this is so evident that the celestial pattern is in places violated and often forgotten. Hence tho calendar can .make no claim to precise moulding on scientific lines, and accepted measurements of time, strange to say. involve anachronisms. Thtso have taxed human ingenuity in efforts to overcome their rough fitting here and there, as leapyears and uneven months bear constant witness, and projects to reform the calendar have been frequent. These things give the man of scientific bent his opportunity for criticism. His comments are entitled to respect.

Far otherwise, however, is it with the cynic who decries the calendar as a legal fiction, and laughs at it as a fraud perpetrated with printer's ink to tickle the fancy of mortals subject to an epidemic of sentiment. To be sure, it is conceding rather much to say that the cynic laughs. He does not know tho joy of a wholesome laugh. But with his nearest approach to a laugh, he has been at the heels of good folk keeping Christmas and finding in the approach of the New \ear a prompting to healthful courage and determination. But his malevolent activity it worth little serious notice. A Ceaseless Cycle.

It must be admitted that the break in the calendar when the New Year comes has nothing in the realm of sense corresponding to it. There is no magic moment marking the beginning of the new period denoted on the calendar. Twelve strokes on a big bell may ring out as the hands of a town clock seem to stand at midnight, and a resounding hubbub from merry-makers may ' echo far and wide; but both the monotonous peal and the many-toned tumult have nothing unusual in them save what is imparted by thought. And the first minute of the New Year is really no whit different from the last minute of the Old. That is the way of the world. Life is a continuous whole. Experience is at one with science in acknowledging this. The seasons merge in a ceaseless cycle. Nightfall utters whispers of a succeeding sunrise, and the moon wanes only to wax anew. Nature is tirelessly on the march, knowing no bivouac. In sober prose there is nothing in the brightest and most sudden of dawns to justify ecstasy. Ever round the earth the advancing edge of sunlight creeps, and dawn is thus perpetual. So it is with the march of the; years. Constant merging is the order of their going. If the stars that give men dates by which to reckon their history could be endowed with what the cynics are denied, they would laugh a little in their sleeves, for they have in their courses no really terminal points nor abrupt departures in the parabolas they take. Old Sol, though ho may be conceived as nothing othci than a" fixed star, might chuckle then in amused recollection that he drags all his dependent system on a sweeping circuit through the heavens. Yet prosaic fact resides iri the unfaltering constancy of the sky, and so to make much of a New Year may seem no better than a fruitless flying in the face of the immutable. Reviev and Hope. When all that can be made of such things is made, however, there remains the equally sure truth that human life is what we make it and that we make it after a fashion that takes little heed of the stars. The laugh is with us. The calendar is humanity's patent of nobility, a veritable assertion of royal birth. A dead device, says the cycnic, in a matter-of-fact mood, merely a few rows of figures. To him, maybe; to mortals with wholesome minds, a timepiece, a rfcadjreckoner. a missal. If they be unwise, it may assert a driving "masterv over them; used with wisdom, as it should be, being made by them for service, it will contribute to their good. Its reminder of the passage of time, its warning of dates by which duties ought to be done, its promise of davs when new departures can be made, will keep life on the move. _ Inevitably, perhaps, for human nature is imperfect, it will chide of tasks uncompleted and opportunities lost; but ahead will beckon other days, to be marked-if the courage born of hone be harnessed to endeavour—with accomplishment.. Out of the calendar may be wrung a virtue. The matter-of-fact truth is with the cynic, and he is welcome to it; but wnnt reallv is of moment belongs to the folk who use the calendar in keeping with its purpose, and this thev do with especial profit when a New 1 car comes I; o verv many, that coming is associated with holiday a tirnf: of relaxation anf ' ; '' o< ? Jess Sm responsibility. Then, with tasks held at arm's length, there can be a que survey impossible when the hurly-burly is all'about and within. An Audit in the Heart. It is the best of all times for an audit in tho counting-house of the he.u . n I p house of Dickens' fancy-dear o d r" ' settlement with them, ™ n 7' n j\ "° a lovable 6 persona 1 ityT his manners and his nav his "debts is worth sharing, with a difference—that a man may, m some cloistered seclusion of his heart, hud out yvrtAWBowlev, " with his -Banket. Let us leave it at that, save to emphasise that tho Banker has a multitude of irrcncies. They have been in oui lis I in ll'« Cln islmiistirtc. Wtot ive eve to our fellows lies !'»< r. , „i.. ce Greetings have passed. Cifts have been made. Goodwill has What a golden opportunity foi rccnllrli>l ts of gratitude unpaid, and of difeheSng! What el, opportunity f '(• _„))inir the underside of all serine-;!,,lTmem"Wence,-of burying MM, of letting bygones be bygones, o <P, ot leinnj, jb "Silly sentiment! The cvnic Pentinfent, yes; hut 8 "f lillv It w the sort of sentiment that " I ft he world go round, though when Tt to g the Banker who keeps nl? oui booki give it . a shorter, stronger name of Saxon origin.