Preferred way to sound in the new year?

As another year draws to a close, many take the opportunity to reflect upon resolutions kept, promises broken, achievements, happenings and other suchlike. The day, of course, represents only another revolution of the sun — a relative, abstract point in space at which the earth rests at a particular angle vis-a-vis the sun (in fact, it’s not even a fixed point, since the solar system is itself rotating along the Orion’s Arm of the Milky Way galaxy). The annual resetting of the calendar has undoubtedly attained the status of a cultural ritual beyond its actual significance. And yet we celebrate: the question, I put to you, is not why, but how?