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Health & Fitness

Happy New Year!

Break out the bubbly, the true start of the year has finally arrived!

Caesar had it wrong. Pope Gregory had it wrong. Heck, the Mayan’s weren’t even close.

The true calendar needs a bit of updating and I shall tell you why.  The New Year always starts in September, at least in Georgia it does. Like a child in the buffet line at Davis Brother’s Cafeteria, we know to load up on dessert first and let the vegetables fend for themselves as we get close to the checkout. We start our year with the good stuff and let the misery wait ‘till the end. Our calendar starts when the best practices of guiltless pleasure-giving are at full throttle.

First, of course, is football season. From high school Friday nights to the pros on Sunday, every foreseeable weekend starting in September is filled with opportunity to cheer, drink, cook, eat, dance and cry. The Saturday Bulldog bacchanal is not only the centerpiece for the first dozen or more weekends of the New Year, it’s what the balance of our time is spent preparing for, fearing, reliving and too often regretting. Georgians, especially, Athenians, see only one true season and it has nothing to do with a lunarcycle. We want Football Season.

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The second guilty pleasure of the true New Year is the kids getting back to school itself. (Poetic license claimed here, I know school now starts in August for some dumb reason). The long hot days of endless creative activities and trips to the pool with bug bites and sunburns has come to an end. For parents, there are clear blocks of time in mid-day when we can exhale, knowing the little ingrates are in the care of professionals and we can think for a moment in peace.  True, we think about what we must do when the kids are home from school and why the heck they don’t just do their darn homework on the bus, but at least we do this thinking alone. In peace.

The next celebrated glory welcomed during September is the long-awaited return of weather. I know that to overeducated meteorologists the sun hot days of June to August with rare storms and unbearably humid nights are some sort of weather, but it’s just the beast of summer to me and most folks I know in Georgia. Anybody been to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in what they call summer? No kidding, you would cry from the comfort. 

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But in September, you may actually feel a cool night. When you do, you forget the pain of August and pinch yourself.  The beast has been confronted, fought and beaten back. Sweaters seem a possibility and you can almost smell your neighbor’s fireplace being prepped for the wet winter ahead. Weather is upon us and the frequent appearance of a day labeled ‘football weather’ makes us remember why we call this lush and beautiful landscape home.

No, January 1 is not our New Year.  It’s a good day off with interesting inter-conference football on TV. My accountant seems to see it as important but it’s not for me.  This, now, today, is New Year's and the only month better than September is coming up next… October.  We need to give that month a better name….

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