Embrace the equinox: Did the last three months even count?

I am writing this in early March, finally with light and warmth. The promise of the year now stretches out before us. There is something of the hibernation or holding pattern about the weeks and months after Christmas. While businesses get going in early January, the workforce does not quite begin the year with the same zeal. And if we consider ourselves first and foremost as the biological bods we are, then that makes sense. 

For example, around New Year (like you do), I started thinking about being better in 2025. It’s tempting to assume that making New Year’s resolutions is some post-war marketing confection, perhaps contrived to get us to buy stuff, like a leisure centre membership or veg box subscription. However, the Romans actually started it—locking in 1st January as the time for a “supernatural spring clean”; Julius Ceasar switched the dates for reasons of Empire admin. 

This year, though, I wondered for the first time whether it would be better to set goals for improvement after the long grey cloud of winter had passed. Resolving to do better when it’s dark by 4 p.m. seems counterintuitive and a bit forced. I can think of a hundred better places to be than an unfamiliar gym in January, trying to start a new exercise regime. 

I am in good company: the Babylonians were doing this 4000 years ago They had the rather clever idea of having the New Year in late March, coinciding with the Spring Equinox crop planting and general passing of the cold winter months. In the Northern Hemisphere, we have the spring equinox around the 20th of March and the autumnal equinox around the 22nd of September. Both dates lend themselves to pause and reflection, with their symbolic weight, a moment held in the balance between growth and decline.

It would be hard to deny some of the Romans’ significant advancements, but they were not all good. Take the seven-day week. While days, months, and years all correspond to the orbit of the Earth, Moon, and Sun, the week makes no celestial sense. 

It’s not just the Romans messing with our rhythms. The Industrial Revolution put paid to our agrarian ‘bi-phasic’ sleep schedule. Originally, the night would be separated into two parts, with an hour or so of wake and nocturnal activity sandwiched between two periods of slumber. We have the captains of industry to thank for this – further disconnecting us from our natural cycles. Today, we understand much more about circadian rhythms and the importance of taking into account ‘chronotypes’, and so on. Still, modern life does not tend to yield to whether or not you’re a ‘lark’ or an ‘owl’, a Zzz-hungry teen, or a light-sleeping senior.

Then we have the relatively recent and total mess, Daylight Saving Time, advocated by, among others, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill and William Willet (inventor and also Coldplay Chris Martin’s great-great-grandfather, don’tcha know).   Implemented during World War One to save fuel (lighter evenings meant fewer burning candles). By 1918, the rest of Europe and the US had followed suit. Today, unhelpfully, one-third of countries are still on Daylight Saving Time. Clearly, DST has nothing to do with working with our natural rhythms; it’s an obvious hangover from the past, and it’s well due a revision.

When forced to conform to these impositions, we discover that we’re generally required to expend much more energy relative to output – consuming all sorts of newfangled thingamajigs to counter the adverse effects: ergo, sleep trackers, innovative mattresses, and superfoods.     

2025 seems not before time to consider how aligned we human beings are with the natural world’s rhythms. Millennia of ‘progress’ has separated us from ourselves. Move over Anthropocene and roll on ‘Symbiocene’: a harmonious future between humans and nature, because we are the same – who knew?!

The verb of ‘Symbiocene’ could be ‘rewilding’, a term that has gained traction over the last several years. This idea advocates that our natural ecosystem needs rebalancing, primarily by reintroducing species to their original native environments. However, the 2020s twist is that this rebalancing should include humans, too.  

All this is to say that we’re looking for a well-lived life that is more in tune with nature’s cycles and free from the distractions of modern life. Starting the New Year with the Spring Equinox might just be what gets us going in that direction!