Chinese New Year 2025

2025 is the Chinese New Year of the Snake and my first reaction is that I don't like it. Oh it's fine for people to say they've looked it up and there's lots of positive things about the symbolism such as rebirth with the shedding of old habits as skins to be discarded, but first reactions are just that - reactions.

A reaction comes when you're weeding the garden, admiring the blossom buds, loosening the soil around the petunias - and then starting back when the little snake zips past. It doesn't want you to see it any more than you want to see it, but it's too late. You know it's just an innocent little sand snake or garter snake or whatever innocuous name it got, but still, it scared the beejeesus out of you. Not fair, I know, but tell that to my beating heart. So, in fairness to snakes and their herpetologist friends, herewith a public examination of my relationship with things that shed their skins.

Ontario has lots of garter snakes. In the spring, you can find hundreds of them massed in birthing or hibernation nests. And if you're a kid with bicycle buddies and you find a nest like that, you can toss them at each other and yell and squeal and pretend you're having fun. I never was. I don't think the garter snakes enjoyed the experience either. Let's look at some positive aspects of snakes.

Now we have to go all abstract here and consider the metaphoric aspects of rebirth and renewal in the skin-shedding process. In this respect, the year of the snake is in the same part of the Chinrese zodiac as dragons with all the finer attributes of that class. European mythologies impuned those reptile species of lizards, snakes, dragons et al. The closest any got to noble stature was the serpent forming the caduceus of the god of medicine, Asclepius or the staff-entwined twin serpents on the staff of messenger god, Hermes. For the most part, serpents in snake or dragon form were to be feared and destroyed - by a St George if one were handy.

But, now I read that this year portends new beginnings. This is a year for the shedding of old ways of being, divesting oneself of bad habits, like a snake shedding its old skin. If this is your year and you didn't make a list of New Year's resolutions, it isn't too late. The thought intrudes that there is a period of poor vision for the snake just after that shedding of the old skin, and I know there were definitely times in my twelve-year cycle of years-of-the-snake when my perception didn't start out as sharp as it might have been, but then cleared remarkably.

Let's see, some of those would be 1965 when I brought the family out to Victoria from Toronto with tough times getting settled but then first house and new baby on the way. 1977 was the year I did the est training and that was a wrenching experience into coming to terms with life. 2001 was a year of homelessness with nights in a tent travelling across the country and then a restored relationship with Beverly. And now I've reached my 84th year of 2025. I don't know whether to go back to bed or take up hang gliding.

The Chinese aren't the only folk to specify a "Year of (insert animal)" although we may not dedicate an entire 365 days to a specific item whether it be creature or abstraction. For all of us, there was the year Kennedy was shot, the year of the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show (OK, you're not all that old), and with those things comes a host of images of social life - hair styles, cars, relationships. It may be "What life was like before X and then after".

I would much prefer my natal emblem to be positive and so I do need to shed some of my prejudices, and if I can't alter history perhaps I can divest myself of some of my thoughts about it. We all know those thoughts as the ones that play themselves out on the video streaming service of our insomniac minds - the whole "coulda-shoulda-woulda" series that is on endless loop. Those are the ones I'd like to shed. I'd sleep better for one thing.

Of course, in my ninetieth decade, I have come to terms with many of those recurring regrets and for the most part I can just roll over to sleep, or get up to pee which is the usual reason for early-hour wakefulness, and then let 'em be. The only stubborn self-flagellation are the failings of my lapses as bad parent. Those were the times I was too strict, too soft, too busy, too stupid. And the worst one of all - if I had done something different, listened better, acted sooner, Judy wouldn't have taken drugs and died. That one I can't seem to shed.