Every year I celebrate the Kickapoo New Year. It comes randomly on a different date every year so my family and friends never know when they'll get a call from me saying, "Happy New Year!" The Kickapoo New Year begins when you hear the first thunder in the Spring (usually in February), but only if the ground has thawed enough that you can stick your finger into it up to the first knuckle. If the ground hasn't thawed, you have to wait for the next thunder. In the old days, the Kickapoo would celebrate the New Year by building new Wickiups and feasting and dancing for four days.
The Cherokee celebrate the Great New Moon with ceremonies and dances. There are thirteen moon cycles in the Cherokee calendar. The Hopi have nine major religious ceremonies throughout the year celebrating the seasons and nature. The Hope and Zuni celebrate the New Year on December 22.
The Umatilla Tribe celebrates the New Year on December 20. It's called Kimtee Inmewit and celebrates when the world was new and the first foods were given to the tribes-the first foods were salmon and deer.
All over the world for thousands of years all people have celebrated and welcomed the New Year. We see it as an opportunity to say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new year with the hope that life will always be better, happier and more prosperous than the previous year. We always have high hopes for the new year; we make resolutions to lose weight, get healthy, save money, get a better job and maybe find love.
My family had a tradition on New Year's Eve to write resolutions on a piece of paper and put them in an envelope. We'd save those envelopes until the next New Year's Eve and then would read them. When we read them a year later we'd laugh because in spite or good intentions, we seldom kept more than a few resolutions. When my daughter, Spring Storm, was eight years old she handed me a blank piece of paper to put into the envelope.
"You haven't written any New Year's Resolutions," I said.
"I didn't need to; there's nothing wrong with me," she said.
How wonderful to be eight years old and feel so happy and confident that you don't think there is anything wrong with you! As we get older, we find more and more flaws in ourselves and in other people.
Recently a man told me he never judged people. He said his motto was "live and let live" and added that everyone was entitled to have his or her own opinion no matter how wrong the person was. He felt very noble about being so non-judgmental.
One of the gifts I usually give my friends for Christmas is a new calendar. The calendars will have pictures of cats, horses, scenery or flowers chosen especially for them. As a joke, I always circle April 23 and write, "Crying Wind's Birthday. Don't forget!" I don't really expect them to send me cards for my birthday, and I do it as a joke.
We all have "secret anniversaries of the heart." Dates that aren't marked on the calendar but dates we never forget-the birthday of a loved one, the date of a broken engagement, the date a loved one died, the date a baby was born-dates that are written in our hearts.
My neighbor, a 78-year-old man, has a calendar hanging on his kitchen wall. Every day has a "Happy Face" drawn on it. When I asked him about this he said that five years ago he had cancer and after surgery and months of treatments he was cancer free. He explained that once you have survived cancer you never have a "bad" day again. Every day he draws a happy face on the calendar because just waking up and living another day is all the reason he needs to be happy.
He's right. Just being alive is a "good enough" reason to be happy.
May the New Year bring you great happiness.
Crying Wind is the author of Crying Wind and My Searching Heart, When the Stars Danced, and Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins.
