A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK I T has never been entirely clear
to me why we persist in starting the New Year on January tat. That corner of the planet which we inhabit presents at this season no symptoms whatsoever of rebirth, of renewal, of a fresh start. We are past the shortest day, but very few of us have yet had the pedantry to observe that the evenings are drawing out. The trees are uncompromisingly bare ; the worst of the winter lies ahead. We are at the beginning and the end of nothing, except the calendar. Worse still, we lack not only the excuse but the urge to celebrate. The surfeits of Christmas are too recent ; our digestions and our consciences, our purses and . our larders and our cellars all need to be taken out of the line to rest and refit. The festoons of holly, the echelons of Christmas cards, the recurring and suddenly too familiar paper hats—on New Year's Eve these are essentially relics: the symptoms of a hang- over masquerading as the recipe for an aperitif. Three months hence, having survived the storms and floods and epidemics that lie ahead, we should be all set to celebrate the New Year, and we could count on some sort of support, however grudging, from Dame Nature. True, this would mean starting our next lap towards what- ever we are headed for on All Fools' Day ; but the Commissioners of Inland Revenue have been doing this for ages, and they seem none the worse for it.
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