I get 3 new years every year. It’s one of my go-to perks of having a mixed background. Each of them feels very different to me.

Chinese New Year is the big production: it’s cooking and cleaning and feasting with friends and family.

Rosh Hashanah is the most sacred: I’ve been to services a handful of times in my life, but even when I don’t go to services there’s blessings and candles – along with challah and apples and honey and brisket.

Then Gregorian New Year is the cultural phenomenon: TV hosts and champagne and charcuterie. Plus it happens at midnight.

I enjoy having 3 new years per year. For one thing, it gives me three times as many opportunities to notice and celebrate the fact that we have this cycle of years. It’s a beautiful part of humanity that we build our lives over regular intervals, which we mark with rituals like new year celebrations.

Some of the cycles we use come to us from nature – like days, years, and sometimes lunar months. But there are also cycles we basically just made up. 7-day weeks are a good example in Western culture, but there’s plenty of others, like the 260 day Tzolk’in in Mesoamerica.

What makes these cycles real to us are the ways where different points in the cycle feel the same. “Wednesday is the worst,” or “I love autumn in New York.” “Wednesday” or “autumn” or “Christmas” or “nighttime” work as abstract times encompassing all the specific Wednesdays or autumns or what have you.

For natural cycles, the actual physical differences of our world make them easy to notice. It’s darker and colder at nighttime or in the winter than it is in the daytime or in the summer.

But I think the more important part is that we go back to the same actions at the same point in the cycle – natural or artificial. We sleep day by day, we work week by week, we celebrate year by year. A little of this can come from practical habits – like brushing your teeth before bed or doing your taxes in April. But actions reinforce our cycles more when they’re purposeful and ceremonial: rituals. Rituals are what make those cycles feel real to us, and reorient us to them.

Religion is an obvious place to look for rituals: we worship on certain days of the week or at certain moments of the day. But rituals don’t have to be what we think of as religious. American culture has its rituals that transcend our specific religions: lighting fireworks every July 4th, pledging allegiance to the flag every morning in school, or singing the national anthem before a football game each week. Sociologists sometimes group these together as “American Civil Religion”, but it’s not religion in the usual understanding.

Rituals can even be something for a small group of people (shouting “Wordpress dot com!” to end lunchtime announcements) or for one person (taking a photograph of yourself before bed). What matters for a ritual is that it has rules that work the same every time, and that those rules have a meaning that extends beyond the practical requirements of the moment.

Consider making more of your life rituals: you might find it helps you feel more grounded and connected to your life. If you put on fuzzy slippers every morning because your feet are cold, that might not be a ritual for you right now. But you can make it one: maybe line up the slippers on the floor, put your left foot in first, and wiggle your toes around to feel the nice texture. Give it a try and see what you think.

Coming soon: Going back: Inkhaven