0
$\begingroup$

We humans have a long tradition of inventing personifications for otherwise impersonal events... such as Santa Claus, Krampus, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, the Tooth Fairy, Time, Death, Pestilence, War, Famine, the Hogfather, the Soul Cake Duck, the Verruca Gnome, the Sock Eater, Lobster Claus etcetera.

Given that I write this question in the new year, I ask the Worldbuilding SE community to come up with a personification of the new year. This personification would be invoked in association with the ending of each year and the beginning of the next, and would not be specific to the beginning of the year 2022 or any other specific year.

Ideally answers should provide details of the character which best personifies the beginning of a new year, with justification as to why that character should be associated with the new year, with details of what it looks like, how it travels (if it travels), where it lives or is found, what it does to promote the beginning of a new year, and a certain je ne sais quoi... perhaps humor, perhaps something else. Pretty much all the sort things that we associate with the other pre-established anthropomorphic personifications with which we are familiar.

It may be presented as being (or actually be) an ancient character, or a recent invention for whatever purpose the answerer desires.

It's purpose may be to be beneficial, promote good habits, or even, like Krampus, to punish bad habits or it may be detrimental.

It need not be strictly logical or completely internally consistent... it's a mythical figure, after all, not a 'real' being.

Since this would be a popular character in a world much like our own, the anthropomorphic personification receiving the most votes after one month will win.

Edit

While lists are traditionally made at the start of a year, I doubt that any answer that consists of a list will prove all that popular. Please limit answers to one character.

Also, Anthropomorphic doesn't mean that the character has to be human-like... just that it has - or reflects - human features

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ the new year can be seen as a reset = gods of destruction and birth and all that phoenix concept $\endgroup$
    – Drien RPG
    Jan 2, 2022 at 11:05
  • $\begingroup$ or the new year can be seen as new stage of growth, a level up in difficulty since now you are older and closer to death, so the new year could also be seen as a challenger that always wants a rematch after 365 days and he always trains harder to beat you up the next year $\endgroup$
    – Drien RPG
    Jan 2, 2022 at 11:07

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
5
$\begingroup$

Isn't this already pretty standard?

The old year is represented by an old, approaching death man, while the new year is a baby, full of energy.

enter image description here

Alternatively, if you can move away from the antropomorphization, you can use a phoenix, which returns from its own ashes, symbolizing the return.

Similarly, in the spirit of the continuous return, it can be an ouroboros, which starts where it ends.

enter image description here

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ Well? Which is it, and why? $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild ♦
    Jan 2, 2022 at 11:13
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ very nice answer $\endgroup$
    – TKoL
    Jan 3, 2022 at 11:15
4
$\begingroup$

Not the new year personification we need. Not the new year personification we want. Probably the new year personification we deserve. 😜

Captain Calendar® is here to warn you that you'll spend the new year as a social outcast if you don't have at least one new calendar on display by January 7th.

Captain Calendar® also wants you to remember that this is one of the best times of the year to party till you puke and that buying a mop before soiling your floors with vomit is a wise move.

Captain Calendar® wants you to forget last year and get some really nice calendars to remind you that it's a new year. Make sure to stock up on alcoholic beverages and get a mop while calendar shopping.

Captain Calendar® is a registered trademark of the Worldwide Union of Calendar Printers, the Global Alcohol Alliance, and the International Federation of Mop Makers.

Show reciepts from the purchase of any 5 calendars and you can get 50% off a mop when you purchase 2 cases of your favorite alcoholic beverage. Visit CaptainCalendar2022.com for details.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Nice one! But how did the calendar printers, alcohol alliance and the mop makers manage to collaborate on this? It sounds like an interesting untold story... $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild ♦
    Jan 2, 2022 at 13:26
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @MontyWild - Thanks! I was working out something just for calendars, but booze is also heavily tied to New Years festivities. Once I was that far down the path of crass over-commercialization, mops to clean up the mess seemed like a good addition. :-) $\endgroup$
    – Escaped Lunatic
    Jan 2, 2022 at 13:34
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @MontyWild - I don't know, but I suspect an open bar was involved. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Serfas
    Jan 3, 2022 at 2:25
2
$\begingroup$

Mother and daughter

The passing of the years could be symbolized by a pair of females, a mother and a daughter, with each new year being symbolized by the daughter being born. The mother raises her daughter as the year goes by and grows old as her daughter matures. Once the daughter has matured at the half-year mark the mother dies. After the mother dies the daughter(magically) becomes pregnant and becomes the new mother, eventually giving birth to the new daughter to begin the new year, and so the cycle continues.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ If the magical reincarnating pregnancy is too off for you you can add an eternal male figure to serve as father and guardian(Father Time wink wink)... but that might make things a little... creepy... $\endgroup$
    – Lemming
    Jan 2, 2022 at 11:40
  • $\begingroup$ So... what would this mother and daughter be called? $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild ♦
    Jan 2, 2022 at 12:15
  • $\begingroup$ @MontyWild To be entirely honest I haven't thought of specific names. Most personifications don't have actual names, only being called after what they represent. Perhaps they'd both share the same name but that name changes with the seasons? Spring once the mother gives birth to the daughter, Summer as she matures, Autumn when her mother dies, and Winter as she faces the hardships of a pregnancy alone(a representation of how difficult the years can be and usually are). That'd only really work for the northern hemisphere though, as the southern hemisphere experiences summer during the new year. $\endgroup$
    – Lemming
    Jan 2, 2022 at 12:38
  • $\begingroup$ @MontyWild Could also just steal the name of Gaia, as she's the primordial and sometimes parthanogenic mother of all life. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia $\endgroup$
    – Lemming
    Jan 2, 2022 at 12:40
1
$\begingroup$

Penrose Stairs

Because each unit of our lifetime is just for mustering our strength to make a step, climbing; one and over again, every time...

New Year's Eve (female) and New Year's Adam (male) are two beings that cheerfully greet you -- again -- each time you make a successful climb around the stairs. They strategically live in a corner, specifically where a larger tile is required to make a turn. The larger tile provides some precious floor required to accommodate festivities, self-reflection, family, leisure, and that sweet-sweet off-work rest.

After all that brief corner, we're all back to climbing, all the same. Eve and Adam wave their hands at you. Wishing you good luck on your journey and your "resolutions" -- the sidequests you wish to complete for this round of climb.

We keep going around, ad infinitum. Working our way through the harsh world, one staircase at a time. Until our body becomes brittle and fragile, and we slip into the gaping middle, swallowed by infinite death, transferred into collective oblivion.

"Happy New Year!" they exclaimed, every time you go climb around.

I'm sorry for the lack of better visual illustration. Also the lack of bright note, but that's not as important.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
-1
$\begingroup$

As an example of the sort of answer I'm looking for in response to my question let me present:

Boojum, the bad luck Snark.

Boojum was originally the mascot of the Boo-Way Fireworks Company, who featured in a series of television advertisements throughout the Western world from November 1959.

The Boo-Way advertisements featured Boojum, the Bad Luck Snark as a cartoon cyclopean single-eyed chimera of bird and bat, with big, horn-shaped ears and a broad, evil grin drawn as a zig-zag line between its upper and lower lips. The Boo-Way advertisements established the lore that Boojum emerged from hiding at the stroke of midnight at the new year, and that he was frightened of fireworks, with which he could be frightened back into hiding for the rest of the year. Boo-Way Fireworks Company fireworks worked best, of course... The advertisements also suggested that if Boojum wasn't frightened away, that he would bite unsuspecting people and give them a year's bad luck.

The Boojum advertisements continued until 1966, when the Australian RSPCA used Boojum in their own advertisements that exhorted the Australian people to not cut down trees with holes or hollows in which wildlife could shelter, stating that Boojum liked to hide in them and keep warm with the other wildlife, but if the tree in which he was hiding was cut down, he would emerge and bite anyone nearby, cursing them with bad luck for the rest of the year.

The Boo-Way Fireworks Company (BWFC) sued the Australian RSPCA for infringement of copyright, but it was found that Boo-Way had failed to register Boojum as a trademark, due to the reuse of distinctive portions of Lewis Carrol's 1876 work, The Hunting of the Snark, now in the public domain, and since Boojum's likeness, along with the terms Boojum and Snark had been submitted for registration of trademark as a single application, the application had been rejected in it's entirety, and BWFC had failed to submit the trademarkable elements of their mascot seperately subsequent to the rejection of the initial application.

In the aftermath of BWFC's failed copyright suit, Boojum was used in similar campaigns to protect old trees that were home to wild animals in other nations around the world.

On December 26, 1980, after governments around the world had begun to impose restrictive legislation concerning the use and sale of consumer fireworks in response to safety concerns, the movie, Boojum Strikes! was released in cinemas around the world. It featured a recognisable animatronic Boojum inflicting terror and misfortune on an unnamed American community in the wake of a ban on the sale and use of fireworks that had been legislated by stealth in the lead-up to New Year's Eve. Predictably, Boojum's reign of terror was halted when members of the community frightened Boojum away with a display of contraband fireworks several nights into the new year, but the bad luck inflicted on those whom Boojum had bitten persisted until the following year, when fireworks were let off at midnight on New Year's day after the anti-fireworks legislation had been repealed.

Following the commercial success of Boojum Strikes!, in 1981, mass protests were organised against legislation restricting or banning consumer fireworks in many countries, most of them using the image of Boojum, and stating that banning the use of fireworks by consumers was an infraction against the people's traditional rights. The catchphrase for the campaign was, "If we're not allowed to frighten away Boojum, are the office-holders going to be lucky enough to stay in office?"

In the wake of the protests, many jurisdictions reversed the bans on fireworks, while others watered down the effect of the legislation or made it almost trivial to obtain a license to purchase and discharge fireworks. In many jurisdictions in which the fireworks legislation remains restrictive, police refuse to enforce it, or take small (but numerous) bribes to overlook the use of fireworks.

Boojum, the Bad Luck Snark has remained a cultural icon ever since. Most people today don't realize that Boojum had originally been an advertising mascot for a fireworks company in 1959, and have attributed him to traditions from the 1880s in England, Europe and America, and deriving from ancient Chinese new year traditions.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .