Image of the Week: Bye Bye, Old Year

© Durga Yael Bernhard

I'm sending my post early in order to share a thought before the end of the year. 

Here's another non-fiction children's book that I illustrated back in the 90s, about New Year's traditions around the world.  In researching this book, I was surprised by how many cultures use the holiday as an occasion to say good-bye to the old year – to banish it, burn it, chase it away, lock it out, or otherwise demolish it.  In these cultures, spirits are thought to abound at the end of the year, which must be dispelled.  Rituals for letting go of the old are as important as those for welcoming the new.  The very word January is rooted in this concept, as the Roman god Janus has two faces:  one looking forward and one backward.  The cowboys shown above seem to be doing both.  They rode into the frontier towns of the 1800s on New Year's Eve in our wild American west, shooting off guns in the air and hooting and hollering – chasing away the old and celebrating the new.    

I found myself illustrating the strangest scenes for this book, such as the fantastic dragons of the Chinese New Year; the odd house decorations of the Japanese New Year; African children running into their homes and slamming doors; and these women throwing pottery out the window in Rome.  Apparently smashing pottery to pieces is one way the old year was (or is) destroyed in Italy.  Look out below!  

The original purpose of noisemakers was to chase away the old spirits that have accumulated during the year, and to make space  for the new.  The demon shown below is a giant personification of one such spirit, held aloft in a New Year's parade in Bali amidst drums and noisemakers.  The black and white patterns signify the balance of good and evil, light and dark.  The idea is not to strive for an absolute or one-sided existence, but to live in harmony with the forces of duality.  Good advice for all of us!

Some people get rid of the old year by burning effigies, such as the giant straw figures thought to embody the spirit of winter in Russia; or the little straw man from Ecuador shown below.  The similarity between such distant places is striking.
 

This seems like a year when we need more than ever to let go of the old.  Perhaps never before have our collective thoughts been so aligned in hoping for a better year.  Let's give 2020 a hearty shove, and get rid of the avalanche of fear and negativity that characterized the whole year.  Consider doing a little ritual in that spirit.  I might throw a symbolic object in my woodstove tonight – or send something off down the stream near my home – or express it in a painting . . . 

Wishing all my readers a happy and healthy New Year!  May you have robust immunity and inner resilience in whatever you face this year. 

Onward, 2021!