Surprising Similarities

When a Japanese person thinks of the “Western New Year,” they often don’t picture New Year’s Eve, but the whole Christmas–New Year period: a Christmas tree, gifts, a warm feast, a supernatural figure who brings presents, an intoxicating night of bidding farewell to the “old,” and a calm day of welcoming the “new.” And when we think of the Japanese New Year, in turn, we don’t see a party outside, but an entrance into the home—decorated, “marked,” ready for a visit from someone invisible. The longer you look at it, the clearer it becomes that different ways of “celebrating” are only the surface—beneath it works an old cultural mechanism: receiving new time like a houseguest, and celebrating abundance in the darkest period of the year—when the day is shortest and food (once) most scarce.

In Japan, the New Year carries, in its very name, the gravity of the calendar: shōgatsu (正月) is not a single night, but the first month—a time when the home switches into ritual mode. At the threshold one places kadomatsu (門松), literally “gate-pine”: a sign that the entrance is no longer just an ordinary door, but an address for toshigami (年神)—the “deity of the year,” meant to bring good fortune and “add” another year of life to the household. Inside waits kagami-mochi (鏡餅)—a “mirror of mochi,” a double white rice form like a quiet little altar of new time, and in the kitchen appears osechi-ryōri (おせち料理), arranged in jūbako boxes: dishes prepared so they can last several days and, at the same time, function as a bundle of wishes. Does that sound exotic? No. In Europe, for centuries we have done something structurally similar: we decorate the home with greenery, bring out “holiday” food, set everyday life aside, as if we, too, sensed that in these nights the threshold of the home is something more than a doorframe—it is a boundary through which the new is meant to pass.

The difference lies more in the language of the story than in the impulse itself. The European figure of the gift wears the face of Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, Grandfather Frost, or the Christ Child (depending on the region), while the Japanese one is Toshigami—“the year” that arrives as grace and leaves traces in objects and gestures. Instead of parcels under a Christmas tree, children receive pochibukuro with otoshidama; instead of a caroling round of houses there is hatsumōde—entering the new time through a visit to a shrine, a coin dropped into the offering box, bows and claps, and then an omamori amulet, a protective hamaya arrow, or an omikuji slip which—if it predicts poorly—is tied within the temple grounds, so that it does not “follow” us home. Today we will talk about the New Year period in Japan and Europe—and see how many different customs, in fact, share similar foundations.

The Darkest Week of the Year—and an Impulse We Share

At the end of December, the day behaves like a miser: stingy with light, stingy with color, and before you manage to drink your second coffee, it is already “late.” In Japan this time even has its own dense, shade-filled language—“shiwasu” (師走), the last month of the year, whose very name carries an image of haste (literally, “the master/teacher runs”), because everyone is running: tidying the house, closing out matters, preparing food, wiping old dust off the calendar. But if you push aside the contemporary clamor and look deeper, you see something more important than “preparations for a party”: in both cultural circles—Europe and East Asia—it is a boundary week, in which human beings try to tame darkness and transition, doing so through rituals of the home, light, and table.

In the Japanese sensibility, the New Year was not originally a single date in the calendar, but a long wave that began somewhere around the winter solstice and grew toward its culmination around the New Year full moon. Old rites of sending off the old year and welcoming the new were sometimes celebrated for about a month; they began at the winter solstice, and reached their “peak” on the night of the New Year full moon; hence the later division into “dai-shōgatsu” (大正月, “great New Year”—the first day) and “ko-shōgatsu” (小正月, “small New Year”—around the fifteenth night). This is not a trivial detail: in the background stands the intuition that “new” time does not begin like the click of a switch, but like a slow crossing of a threshold. Even “koyomi” (暦) is read here in its original sense as “hiyomi”—“reading the days/sun” (日読み), that is, observing the sky as a daily practice, before it became a little table in a phone.

In the same spirit appears an extremely old intuition, shared by both traditions: that boundaries are counted at night. The “boundary of the day” falls with the coming of night, which is why so many of the most important New Year moments carry the weight of evening and night. Surprisingly, we find a similar logic in old Europe: one can recall Caesar’s remark in “The Gallic War” that for the Gauls night “came first” before the morning—and that a day could run “from evening to evening.” This explains why in both worlds it felt so natural to experience the turning of the year chiefly at night: when the light disappears and the human being is left with fire, food, and story.

And here we arrive at an impulse we truly share: “I tidy the home, because the home is about to become a stage.” In the Japanese tradition of shōgatsu (正月), the center is not fireworks, but receiving into one’s own home a particular guest—“toshigami” (年神) or “shōgatsu-sama” (正月様). This is one of the important features of Japanese ritual thinking: the deity “descends” into the home, and the home prepares a place for it—not abstractly, but materially, through signs and objects. That is why the motif of the “sacred tree,” or yorishiro (依り代)—a thing upon which the sacred “can alight”—is so important: evergreen branches, sakaki, but also symbolic objects like a sword, a mirror, a jewel; not as decoration, but as an address to which the invisible guest is meant to arrive.

Europe tells it in a different language, because it covered the old religious layer with a Christian narrative—but the very mechanism of the “turning point” remains strikingly similar. In both circles there appears a custom of decorating the home with evergreen plants, as well as a motif of a “gift” received from a being from another world; the similarity is real, even if the nuances of meaning differ. And when we add to this the fact that European calendars, too, long lived in tension between the “old” and the “new” (take, for instance, the differences between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, shifts of dates, and the fact that “the same holiday” could “fall” differently), we begin to understand that this week at the turn of the year is not only a matter of a date. It is a period in which people, for centuries, have tried to do the same thing: for a moment to put the world in order, so that in the deepest darkness they can say—with relief, and a little magic—“we begin again.”

Why a Japanese Person, Thinking of the “Western New Year,” Sees… Christmas

A Japanese person asked about the “Western New Year” will often not answer with the image of New Year’s Eve, but… a Christmas tree. In their imagination, the turning of the year in the West smells of fish, glows with string lights, carries gift wrap, and features that very concrete scenography which in Europe begins already in mid-December: a tree in the home, then a ceremonial dinner, presents “from someone outside”—Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, a mysterious and supernatural being who comes at night. In this sense, “Christmas” becomes for Japanese people a shorthand for the entire Western holiday season, because it is precisely that season which bears the most visible, material signs of “exceptional time.”

In Japan, “New Year” is not a Christmas tree and not New Year’s Eve, but shōgatsu (正月)—literally “the first month,” the first stretch of the year, with its own aesthetic, cuisine, and rhythm of visits. When a Japanese person thinks “our New Year,” they see a set of signs almost encyclopedically concrete: osechi-ryōri (おせち料理)—New Year foods prepared so they can last for several days and at the same time “tell” of good fortune; kadomatsu (門松)—decorations of pine and bamboo placed at the entrance (more about them here: Shōchikubai and the Polish Christmas Tree: Enduring Green Amid Lifeless White); kagami-mochi (鏡餅)—an offering “mirror” mochi; and otoshidama (お年玉)—a New Year gift for children. And here it becomes truly interesting, because this list tells us: the Japanese New Year is above all “domestic” and ritual, focused on welcoming new time like a guest, not on a one-off night of fireworks.

Take otoshidama, for example. Today it is associated with an envelope of money (which, incidentally, is creatively used by Japanese people to educate and raise children in financial awareness), but historically—and this is one of those small pieces of information that changes one’s perspective—it took the form of mochi, that is, an “edible symbol” a child received like a material portion of New Year grace. In old stories there even appears a figure called “toshidon”/“toshichiisan,” who on the night of the turning point knocks at the door and brings good children a “year” in the form of a gift; and refusing to accept it would mean lacking the possibility to “add” another year to one’s own life... This is no longer a sugary fairy tale about presents, but a very archaic logic: the gift means permission to enter a new cycle.

When Does the “New Year” Really Begin?

If you went back a few hundred years, the question “when does the new year begin?” would sound suspiciously modern. For people of earlier eras, the year did not start like an app after clicking “restart,” but like a process: something first grows quiet, then turns around, gathers strength, until it finally becomes obvious. That is why in New Year traditions—both European and Japanese—we so often encounter not one date, but an entire “border band” of days and nights, in which the world has a different density: more silence, more light in windows, more food, more gestures of ordering.

The simplest difference that explains a great deal is the choice of the “clocks of the sky.” There are two great rhythms: the sun and the moon. The rhythm of the sun is marked by the winter solstice—the moment when the day is shortest, and then begins to lengthen. For religious and folk imagination, this is a turning point with the force of a symbol: “from now on it will be brighter,” “the world returns.” The rhythm of the moon works differently: it does not give one turning point, but a rising and a culmination, and the “peak” is not a moment but a night—full moon or new moon. And that is precisely why ancient year-turning festivals so often contained the logic of the “New Year full moon”: when moonlight is at its maximum, the boundary of time seems most tangible.

In Japan this lunar logic was natural for centuries, because the traditional calendar was lunisolar: months were counted according to the phases of the moon, and at the same time care was taken that the year did not “drift away” from the seasons (hence the insertion of additional months in certain years). This meant that “the first day of the first month” did not have a fixed date in our modern sense. Sometimes it fell earlier, sometimes later—but its meaning was consistent: the beginning of a new lunar cycle, embedded in wintertime. In this perspective, the New Year was something that “came from the sky,” not something declared by an administration.

In the old Japanese order of time, something else is important too—something that can escape a European reader: the boundary of the day. In many traditions (including European ones) the day began not at midnight, but in the evening, with the arrival of night. This explains why transitions—New Year, holidays, rituals—so often happen “at night”: it is not only romantic scenery, but a consequence of an old logic of counting time. Night was first, day second; first darkness, then light. In such a structure, the passage into the “new” naturally tastes like a vigil.

When Japan entered the Meiji era, it decided to synchronize with the rhythm of the modern world—trade, diplomacy, railways, telegraph. And so in 1873 (Meiji 6) the Gregorian calendar was officially introduced. The effect was not only technical, but cultural: “shōgatsu”—formerly dependent on lunar reckoning—was “pinned” to January 1. Imagine that from tomorrow onward Easter always has a fixed date—and yet its symbolism remains. Something similar happened here: the meaning and rituals of shōgatsu survived, but the astronomical frame changed.

Europe, too, knows a similar tension, though along a different axis: not sun versus moon, but “old calendar” versus “new calendar.” The Gregorian reform introduced a correction relative to the Julian calendar and caused dates to “jump” by a few days (and over time the difference grew). In practice, this meant that people lived in a world where “the same holiday” could be observed on different days depending on country, denomination, and sometimes even on whether we speak of official institutions or folk custom. Hence, in many places in Europe, the experience of “old” and “new” was not a metaphor, but a reality: some said the New Year was already past, others—that it was still ahead. And we have this to this day, for example in Orthodoxy.

Not a Party, but a “Reception”

If there is one key in comparing Japanese and European New Year customs that opens all doors at once, it is this: the old New Year was not a “ball,” but a visit. In Japan this thought is surprisingly literal. The word shōgatsu (正月) does not mean “one night,” but “the first month”—a time when the home becomes a place of ritual, and the family the host of something more than neighbors as guests. In folk tradition, the central figure of this period is toshigami (年神)—the “deity of the year,” also called shōgatsu-sama (正月様), the “Lord/Lady of the First Month of the Year.” This is not a metaphor in the style of “holiday mood”: in the old sensibility it is a real being of the sacred order, who comes to “bring the year”—health, harvest, continuity of the lineage, and even the very “living through” another cycle.

The name itself is very concrete. Toshi (年) is “year,” but in its linguistic lining it also hides the sense of “age” and “counting life”—because years are not only dates, but successive layers of existence. Kami (神), meanwhile, in practice does not mean only “god” in a monotheistic sense, but rather “the power of presence”: something that can act, bless, but also demands forms, etiquette, and boundaries. That is why shōgatsu is a time when the home is “set” for such a presence. Not through general atmosphere, but through specific signs that say: “the entrance is here.”

And here we enter one of the more interesting mechanisms of Japanese folk religiosity: the idea of yorishiro (依り代)—a “carrier,” a “stop,” an “address” in which what is invisible can manifest. In practice, during shōgatsu that address becomes the entrance decorations, and above all kadomatsu (門松). The name itself is like an instruction manual: kado (門) is “gate, entrance,” and matsu (松) is pine. So it is not an “ornament,” but a sign at the threshold. Pine is evergreen, it endures in winter, it does not “die” with the deciduous world—so for a long time in Japan it has functioned as a plant of resilience and long duration. But kadomatsu is not exclusively “pine”: in practice it combines pine with bamboo (often cut on a diagonal), and sometimes also with plum. The set is like a short poem about life: pine—steadfastness; bamboo—springiness and rapid growth; plum—beauty that can bloom even in the cold.

Inside the home, another equally concrete “focal point” of the year’s presence operates: kagami-mochi (鏡餅). It is two white blocks of mochi stacked one on top of the other, usually with a small bitter orange (daidai) on the top. In the name you have two important clues. Kagami (鏡) is “mirror”—and a mirror in Japan is not just an object; it is one of the three imperial regalia (sanshu no jingi), and in religious imagination it can be associated with purity and “showing the truth” without retouching. Mochi (餅), meanwhile, is not only a “cake,” but a rice substance of a particular kind: pounded, dense, sticky—thus “binding”—and it works symbolically. In this sense, kagami-mochi functions like a domestic “little altar of the year”—a place where the new time has form and weight. Not by accident, later the mochi is “broken” (kagami-biraki) and shared: this is not eating simply, but a gesture of bringing the blessing into everyday life. It reminds one of our European custom of sharing bread, doesn’t it?

And now the most interesting part: in this logic, it is not about “celebrating a lot,” but about “receiving well.” That is why shōgatsu has so many elements of discipline. First come the end-of-year cleanings (ōsōji): cleaning not only as hygiene, but as removing old, “used-up” energy. Then the preparation of food that is meant to last and to function for several days—osechi-ryōri (おせち料理)—dishes arranged in jūbako boxes, where every ingredient is at once a dish and a sign (of abundance, fertility, longevity, good fortune).

In the background there is an old practical sense: during the festive time, everyday bustling around the fire is limited; but the cultural sense is deeper—the home enters ritual mode, and ritual prefers the host not to be “torn apart” by trifles. Even the contemporary atmosphere of the first few days of January in Japan—quieted streets, closed shops, a family rhythm—is a shadow of that older idea: at the threshold of the year you do not scatter the home, because the home is meant to be a place of meeting.

Seen from Europe, it is easy to say: “All right, but we do not invite a deity into the apartment.” Only that sentence is true mainly in a modern, urban shortcut. If you reach back into older layers of European customs, you will discover a strikingly similar logic of “holy nights”—a time when the world is soft, and boundaries between different orders of existence become thin.

In different regions of Europe, the period from the solstice to the first days of January was treated as a special time: the home is then not merely a “place of living,” but a “place of protection,” and sometimes even a “place of negotiation” with what is invisible. Hence so many old customs and taboos: what one must not do, when it is better not to set out on the road, why certain domestic tasks were discouraged, why in some traditions one leaves something “for the house”—crumbs, a portion, an extra place setting—a gesture that looks banal until you see in it exactly the same structure as in other cultures, for example in the Japanese “reception of the year”: acknowledging that in those days the home is not alone.

Look at the motif of “coming from outside.” In Japan it is toshigami—someone who “brings the year.” In Europe, too, in the folklore of the year’s turning point, very often “someone comes”: carolers, masqueraders, figures in masks and animal skins, groups going from house to house with wishes, song, and ritual. From today’s perspective it is “folk entertainment,” but from an ethnographic perspective it is also a symbolic model: the home is visited by a figure of the “Other,” and the host responds with hospitality, food, a donation. That donation is not merely payment for entertainment; it can be an “exchange” with an order that in these days gains a voice. Similarly operate European customs of the “first guest” in the New Year: it is not about just anyone entering first, but about someone “proper” entering—with the right sign, energy, and sometimes with a symbolic object in hand. This is the same intuition as the kadomatsu by the door: the threshold in these days has meaning.

For the Japan–Europe comparison, the most important thing is not the difference of “we celebrate differently,” but the shared structure: the turning of the year as a ritual of hospitality toward new time and toward what comes with it. From this axis one can then derive everything we will see further on: why greenery in the middle of winter matters so much in both cultures, why food is so essential, why gifts for children appear, and why alongside joy there is also a list of things one “shouldn’t” do in days of transition. Because when the New Year is a visit, not a party, you suddenly understand that decorations are not decorations, but an invitation; the table is not a table, but a declaration; and the home—for a few nights—becomes something like a small temple of everyday life.

Otoshidama and Saint Nicholas

In Japan, children do not wait for gifts under a Christmas tree—they wait for an envelope. It is called otoshidama (お年玉) and literally means “jewel of the year” or “little treasure of the year”: toshi (年) is “year,” and tama (玉) is “ball, pearl, jewel,” a word with a very old aftertaste, because in Japanese tama could carry meanings of a “precious essence,” a “soul,” a “power.” Today, otoshidama is usually money in a decorative pochibukuro envelope (ポチ袋)—small, often with zodiac motifs, daruma, maneki-neko, or simply with the inscription “お年玉” (otoshidama). The envelope is given in the first days of shōgatsu, usually at home, in a family atmosphere, after offering greetings such as “akemashite omedetō gozaimasu” (明けましておめでとうございます). The gesture is so common that for many children shōgatsu has a very concrete “geography of emotion”: visiting relatives equals another pochibukuro in the pocket.

But the most interesting thing is what lies beneath the surface of money. Otoshidama did not begin with banknotes. Formerly, the “gift of the New Year” was mochi—a rice cake that in shōgatsu plays an almost sacral role. In many regions, a child was given a piece of New Year mochi as a material sign: “you have received your year.” Over time, this gift “turned into cash,” but it preserved the structure: it is not random pocket money, but a New Year “dose of luck,” something meant to trigger a good start. Even contemporary Japanese conversations about otoshidama often go hand in hand with the language of “grace” and “good fortune”—as if money were only a convenient wrapper for an older meaning.

Who in Japan “gives” this gift in the symbolic sense? Here we touch the core: in the traditional imagination, it is not only an uncle or a grandmother, but toshigami (年神) itself—the deity of the year, the guest of shōgatsu (true, isn’t it again similar, as with us?). It brings the “year” into the home, and people share its blessing: through mochi (kagami-mochi), through New Year food, through rituals of visits and wishes—and precisely through otoshidama for children, who are the “continuity of the house.” In some folk stories there even appears a figure of a New Year “grandfather” or “lord of the year,” who comes at night and checks on children, and the reward is a gift—not so much “for being good,” but as a confirmation: “this year, too, be part of the world, endure.”

In Europe the story is different, though the mechanism can be surprisingly similar. For us the gift is most often “personified” in the figure of: Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, sometimes Grandfather Frost, the Christ Child, and several other symbols—depending on the country and region. It is worth noticing a small but important cultural detail: the European gift usually takes the form of a thing (a toy, a book, sweets), whereas the Japanese gift takes the form of an exchangeable value (money). This is not “more practical” versus “more romantic,” but two traditions of materializing the same promise: “in the time of transition you receive something extra, because the world, for a moment, works differently.” And just as in Japan otoshidama intertwines with the visit of the deity toshigami, so in Europe presents intertwine with the narrative of someone coming at night from outside—with a sack, a sleigh, reindeer, or with a bishop’s mitre in the tradition of Saint Nicholas.

In both cases, one more shared element is at work, easy to miss: the gift is almost always tied to food. In Japan, shōgatsu is a time of “special food”—osechi in jūbako boxes, zōni with mochi, symbolic ingredients for good fortune. In Europe, similarly: a time of exceptional dishes, the table, sweets, baked goods “only for the holidays.” Anthropologists like to say it is a moment of “controlled excess”: the community allows itself luxury, because luxury is meant to be a sign that the new cycle will be abundant. That is why money in an envelope and a parcel under a tree play the same role as the festive table: they are meant to “materialize” hope.

So if you set aside the decorations and marketing, a pure core remains: in the darkest time of the year, a protective figure appears—personified (Saint Nicholas) or more “deity-like” and domestic (年神 / toshigami)—and leaves behind a mark of grace. For a child that mark is simple: you receive something. For adults it is a deeper signal: “the year has begun, the world is favorable, the home has continuity.” And it does not matter whether that promise has the shape of a banknote in a pochibukuro or a box under a tree—in both cultures it is the same gesture: the gift as the seal of a new beginning.

Carolers, Masqueraders, a Twig in the Hand—When “Luck” Comes from Outside

In the turning of the year there is something disturbingly beautiful: for a few days, a person feels that luck is not born exclusively inside—that it comes from outside. Literally. That is why so many cultures invented a ritual of “arrival”: someone knocks at the door, sings, offers wishes, leaves a sign, and disappears into the darkness. From the perspective of anthropology, it is an almost universal liminal script: at a time when the calendar “shifts,” the home is not only a private shelter, but a point of contact with the world—also the invisible one. And the most interesting thing is that in this scene it is not about information (“we wish you well”), but about action. The wish is “performative”: spoken at the right time, by the right person, it is meant to “make” the future.

In Europe you can still see this today in caroling traditions and New Year visits—especially where the memory of rites has survived as a living practice. The word “kolęda” itself leads us, in fact, to the Roman calendae—the first days of the month, when wishes were offered and small gifts given; language has left a trace of the fact that “the beginning” could be a feast in itself. And then comes a layer typically folk: disguise, mask, an animal head, noise, song—everything that tears the home from everydayness and says: “this is not an ordinary evening.”

In the Balkans, this logic even takes the form of a tool held in the hand—a twig that is at once a symbol of life and a “conductor” of wishes. In Bulgaria, on January 1 (people often speak of it as Survaki), children or young boys go from house to house with a survačka—a decorated branch (traditionally of cornelian cherry, because it blooms early and is considered exceptionally “vital”). The branch is adorned with threads, dried fruit, sometimes a coin, popcorn, or red ribbons, and the gesture consists of lightly tapping household members on the back while reciting formulas wishing health, fertility, and prosperity.

This is not “a game of knocking”: it is a ritual of transferring the force of growth (the branch) onto the body and fate of a person. Romania and Moldova have a similar motif in the form of the sorcova—a New Year “switch” or twig, today often brightly decorated, with which children symbolically touch adults while speaking wishes for long life and good fortune. Different languages, different melodies, but the same structure: someone comes from outside and “brings” luck into the home through word and touch.

This “twig in the hand” says something else as well: that prosperity is imagined as movement. Not “I have luck,” but “luck comes.” And that coming must have a form—song, a prop, a mask, a rhythm of steps on snow. In this sense, carolers and New Year visitors are like mobile, human “kadomatsu”: a sign that the home’s threshold is active, that the outer world has the right to knock—so long as it comes with good intention and in a ritual costume.

Japan has its own version of the same impulse, though it less often realizes it in the form of “a crowd of carolers” wandering from house to house. Here the logic is more palpable: “something” comes (the deity of the year, good fortune, protection), and the person prepares a channel for this “coming.” Hence the signs at the threshold—kadomatsu, shimekazari (a sacred straw rope and ornaments at the door), sometimes paper zigzags shide associated with ritual purity. They are not meant to “look nice.” They are meant to act like an address and a filter at once: to invite what is good, and to separate from the home what is undesirable.

And yet in Japan there are also very concrete echoes of the “magic of wishes” arriving from outside—though often in an institutional form, tied to the temple and the community. In the first days of January, people go for hatsumōde—the “first visit” to a shrine or temple, in order to greet the new year with prayer, a coin thrown into the offering box, bows and claps (kashiwade in Shintō shrines).

Then they take into their hands objects that are the material form of wishes: an omamori (amulet), a hamaya (an arrow “that drives away demons”), sometimes an ema (a wooden votive plaque), and also an omikuji—a fortune slip, which can be tied at the temple if it foretells something unfavorable, as if leaving the burden of fate in a place where it will be “processed” by the sacred. This is no longer a twig, but the mechanism is similar: luck comes from outside the home, and the person brings it back in a pocket, in a hand, in a small object.

It is worth making a short digression here about ko-shōgatsu (小正月), the “small New Year,” traditionally associated with the fifteenth night of the first month (in the older lunar reckoning—around the full moon). In many regions of Japan it is a time of prosperity rites and agricultural good fortune, more “folk” and communal than the main, official shōgatsu.

One of the most suggestive customs is the burning of New Year decorations in rituals such as dondoyaki (also known under local names), when kadomatsu and shimekazari burn in a bonfire, and the smoke and flame are meant to send the “power of the New Year” back to the world of deities, closing the cycle. It is a beautiful, very concrete moment: luck is not a state to be held—it is a movement one must know how to receive and know how to bid farewell to.

And if you look at all of this at once, Europe and Japan meet at one point that is worth stating outright: the turning of the year is a time when words have weight, and the threshold of the home has metaphysics. A caroler with a song, the Bulgarian survačka, the Romanian sorcova, Japanese amulets from hatsumōde, burning decorations in dondoyaki—these are different dialects of the same intuition. That in the darkest nights of the year a person does not only want to “celebrate.” They want to be touched by a promise. They want something to come from outside and tell them, by the most symbolic gesture: “it will be well, you go on.”

Do We Notice the Time of Passage?

Modernity has turned the turning of the year into something like a switch of stage scenery: yesterday “holidays,” today “sales,” tomorrow a “new start” in a habits app. Europe and Japan are no exceptions here—both worlds have taken the same path: from a ritual meant to protect the home’s threshold and order one’s relationship with time, to a season meant above all to drive the movement of goods and manufacture an atmosphere of “obligatory joy.” The Christmas tree can already be merely an interior element, kadomatsu—“pretty folklore,” and wishes—a ready-made formula  into a messenger. And there is no sense pretending time can be turned back: most of us live in cities, at work, in scattered families, in a culture that no longer knows the long silence of winter. But that is precisely why it is worth knowing the sources—not in order to reconstruct the past, but to regain meaning without a naïve escape into “things used to be better.”

Because the sense of these holidays did not lie in decorations in themselves, but in what the decorations were meant to do. An evergreen branch—whether in the form of a Christmas tree, or in the form of kadomatsu—was a promise of life at a moment when life seems distant. The table—whether the European Christmas Eve table, or the Japanese New Year table—was a contract: that in the darkest time we will not live only to endure, in haste and carelessness, but will “take from life what is due to us.” And gifts—whether money in an envelope, or a parcel under the tree—were a material confirmation that the new cycle should begin with surplus, not lack; with a gesture of care, not calculation. When you remember this, commerce ceases to be the only narrative: you can buy things, and at the same time not surrender the whole meaning to them.

For this specific week—December 29 to January 4—a small, practical “instruction of attentiveness” is enough. Look at the threshold of your home: is there any sign of intention there (even just a branch, light, order), or only accident? Look at the table: is there at least one “special” element not because it is expensive, but because it was consciously chosen—something that says: this is a time of passage? And look at wishes: do you speak them like an automatic sound, or like a short, real promise toward another person. The rest can be simple: a cleaner home, one good dish, one envelope for a child, one conversation without a phone, one walk out into a cold evening to feel that this truly is a boundary. Different stories—the same human impulse to invite life into the home in the middle of winter.

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"Strong Japanese Women"

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    未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

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