Still more on New Year's

I used to think that the new year should start with the spring equinox. After all, that is the time of rebirth, when the days finally start to get longer, and the world gets ready to start new generations of just about everything. With the new grass, all things seem fresh.
The best argument for starting the year just after the winter solstice is a psychological one. For one thing, everyone needs a good reason to get out during the winter. Let's face it, even after all of that Christmas running around, the season isn't complete until you've kissed your sweetheart at midnight.
Another good thing to mention about the timing we have set for the new year is that it brings with it time for expectation and hope. By the time the "natural" new year rolls around, everyone is too busy to think about what they want or need to accomplish in the new year. In days not so long gone by, fields needed to be plowed and sown, calves were being born, and houses cleaned out. Granted that in our information age, these things aren't the distractions to celebrating a trip around our sun that they were, but it is a part of our heritage.
There is an even older psychological reason to put the new year in what we now call January. At the darkest time of the year, ancient peoples had the belief that there was the threat that the sun might never return. When your whole existence depends on the sunny days returning, you definitely want a time to pray to whatever gods you believe in that they will. Some say that's what the big deal was with Stonehenge. It was a place to pray to the gods for the dead and departed, and that meant the sun as well.
Sometimes we have to dig a little deep to understand the way that we do things. If you question things once in a while, instead of just doing the because "that's how it's always been done", sometimes the reasoning will make sense.
Then again, that is just my idea.