Happy New Year

Shinto: Today is Tohji-taisai. The Grand Ceremony of the December Solstice, which celebrates the ending of the yin period of the sun, when it declines in strength, and the beginning of its growing power or yang period.

Wicca: Today is Yule. The New Year in the Anglo-Saxon and northern traditions of Wicca is the celebration of the birth of the god as the winter-born king symbolized by the rebirth of the life-generating and life-sustaining sun. This archetype is metaphorically the masculine sun born of the mother earth and is therefore more similar to our culture's baby new year than any judeo-christian patriarchal sort of king. It is a time for ritually shedding the dross of the past year.

Note to Nameless Daughter: Perhaps we ought to be putting suns on top of our trees rather than stars.