口语Festival素材:New Year's Day（新年）

　　New Years Day January 1

　　10...9...8... The lighted ball in New Yorks Times Squarestarts picking up speed. 7...6...5... Its almost time. 4...3...2... Everyone holds their breath for the last few seconds. Were about to jump that seemingly large but invisible gap that separates the years. 1...0... Happy New Year!

　　We made it. The old year, for better or worse, is gone for good. The new year has begun with fresh promise. Heres our chance to start again, to do it right this time, to have another shot at success...at glory...at just accomplishing what we resolve to. Its time to shed that baggage from the year long gone and celebrate what can be in the 365 untouched days to come. Happy New Year!

　　We can trace the origins of a new years celebration back to the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, at least 4,000 years ago. In Egypt, the Nile river signaled a new beginning for the farmers of the Nile as it flooded their land and enriched it with the siltneeded to grow crops for the next year. This happened near the end of September.

　　The Babylonians held their festival in the spring, on March 23, to kick off the next cycle of planting and harvest. Symbolically, the king was stripped of his robes and sent away for a few days while the people whooped it up. He then returned in all his fineryfor a grand parade, and the normal activities of life would return for the new year.

　　So how did we get to January 1 as the start of the year? That date was picked by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar when he established his own calendar in 46 BC. The Roman Senate had actually tried to make January 1 New Years Day in 153 BC, but it wasnt until Caesar stretched out 47 BC for 445 days that the date were familiar with was synchronizedwith the sun. Weve been on the Julian calendar ever since.

　　There must be something inside of us that needs to unload the accumulated results of fate and our own decisions and start anew. The Romans knew this. The month of January was named for their god, Janus, who is pictured with two heads. One looks forward, the other back, symbolizing a break between the old and new. The Greeks paraded a baby in a basket to represent the spirit of fertility. Christians adopted this symbol as the birth of the baby Jesus and continued what started as a pagan ritual. Today our New Years symbols are a newborn baby starting the next year and an old man winding up the last year.