Happy Sylvester?

I cannot believe this country does not celebrate New Years! X-mas I understand. But c'mon, New Years?!

I have been complaining about this for days to friends, coworkers, taxi drivers, random people on the street - basically anyone who has the time to listen to me whine. The most common answer is that "we have Rosh Hashana!"

Let's be serious people are these holidays in any way similar? On New Years we have champaign, on R"H we have fish head. On New Years we listen to Prince and party like its 1999, on R"H we listen to the Chazzan sing about who died this last year.

Don't get me wrong, I think R"H is excellent and the irreligious are unfourtanate that they don't have it for many reasons. But I don't think we should have to get rid of December 31st new years. If R"H is our calendar year end, then New Years is our fiscal year end and we should celebrate.

The more times we have set aside to reflect on our lives the better. Some mussar seforim recommend doing a cheshbon hanefesh every night, others weekly. Most of us I believe don't do it enough.

New Years is a great time to reflect on your accomplishments of this year, as well as set realistic goals for the coming year. I realized that the goals I listed previously are too much for me, and I have to cut them down. It's a very upsetting thing to do, but better to accomplish a few than fail in all, IMO (in my opinion).

New Years really is a new year for finances as well as taxes are based on it and most companies close their books on December 31. I HIGHLY recommend everyone take the time to review their finances and set their short term and long term goals. Last year I did this and started using Yodlee as my personal financial dashboard and it has really simplified my finances. (It's a program that links to all of your bank accounts and loans so you can see your net worth calculated and keep track of it. It also lays out the information in helpful graphs.)

I hope you find it helpful.

May next year be twice as good as this one.