Do we buy new calendars? Sure. Do we spend the night before propping up the booze and diaper industry by hammering our livers at parties and stretching our bladders in Times Square? Of course. Do we write a list of resolutions that will sit, unread, at the bottom of a stack of laundry piled on top of the seat of our untouched Peloton? Every year.
But Jan. 1 doesn’t give you that feeling you get when you open up a new tub of ice cream and stare at the beautiful, untouched expanse of peanut butter ripple like you’re Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink seeing Antartica for the fist time. (And no, I didn’t just Google “first person Antartica”—I just knew that off the top of my head. Ahem.)
There is one day, however, that does feel like a new beginning. It’s called Labor Day and it should be the first day of the new year. And wait, hold on, before you dial the offices of South Jersey Magazine to advocate for my arrest and possible deportation to Antartica, let me explain.
If you grew up in South Jersey, you probably started school the day after Labor Day. That means, even as an adult, baked into the deepest part of your bones, is a sense of how much time is left until that day. You can probably feel it, right now, ticking away in the background, like a Logan’s Run crystal embedded in your palm. Nobody feels that way about New Year’s.
And then, there’s that sense of renewal that comes every year on Labor Day. Think about it: What did you whisper to yourself at the start of every single school year? This year, I’ll take it seriously. This year, I’ll get all my work done. This year, I’ll be able to pass the Presidential Physical Fitness Test without collapsing in a gasping, wheezing pile of agony on the ground. (OK, that last one might just have been me.)
Most likely, you didn’t follow through with any of those promises—if you did, your butler would be reading this article to you—but still, the idea that Labor Day marks the beginning of something new is intrinsic in a way that it is not for New Year’s.
Finally, Labor Day comes at the end of the second-worst stretch of the year: the dog days of August, when the heat and humidity are pressing down on your chest like boulders laid across Giles Corey. Labor Day signals in our brain a pivot from hot and brutal to cool and crisp. We start thinking about football and playoff baseball, and the smell of firewood floating through our neighborhoods.
New Year’s, on the other hand, signals to us that we’re about to go sludging through the worst stretch of the year: January, February and March, when the world looks and feels like the gross black snow stuck underneath a pickup’s mudflap.
I’m sure you’re absolutely convinced at this point, and, like me, you’re unconcerned with the global upheaval a complete and largely arbitrary reworking of our calendar would cause. We got through the Y2K crisis without a single apocalypse, how hard could it be to make Labor Day the new first of the year?
The real challenge would be making sure that people stopped trying to extend summer well past Labor Day, into September and even October.
Listen, I get that businesses that specialize in summer fun want to keep the party going, especially now that they’ve moved Miss America to January and that nobody’s been able to figure out how to commercialize “National Hug a Vegetarian Day” on Sept. 26, but for this whole thing to work, we need to get back to a time when things started and stopped when they’re supposed to.
You’ve seen and felt it: They try to make summer last until deep into fall, they try to start Christmas before Thanksgiving, and Halloween season begins closer and closer to the Fourth of July every year.
But that runs counter to our intrinsic understanding of the calendar: Certain times of year have feelings associated with them that are stitched into the lining of our brains, and no amount of hopeful prodding can change that. Breakfast for dinner can work sometimes, but Bottomless Mimosa Brunch at midnight means you probably have a drinking problem.
And, OK, maybe my Labor Day idea is dumb, but respecting the calendar isn’t: Summer should start on Memorial Day and end on Labor Day, and the first Christmas song shouldn’t be played until 9 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s almost October, I have to stock up on Easter candy.
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Published and copyrighted in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 22, Issue 4 (July 2025)
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