The Month of the Heart of Winter

It's January 1st!!!!! Happy New Year All! I love New Years Day, there is something very exciting about the start of the year, it has that blank slate quality and holds the promise of new opportunities.

We had a lovely evening with friends last night to see the New Year in and have started the day well so far. The dogs are walked, fed and watered and we are sitting on the couch, wrapped in the duvet, watching the Muppet's Christmas Carol!!! The ghost of Christmas past has just arrived.

Anyway, I had a great blogging year last year and wanted to get a good start in for January 2011 so I have been looking out some quotations and interesting January information care of Michael P. Garofalo at E Greenway.

"January is here, with eyes that keenly glow, a frost-mailed warrior striding a shadowy steed of snow."
-   Edgar Fawcett

"To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June."
-  Jean-Paul Sartre

"January is named after the Roman god Janus, who was always shown as having two heads.  He looked back to the last year and forward to the new one.  The Roman New Year festival was called the Calends, and people decorated their homes and gave each other gifts."

"New Year ceremonies are designed to get rid of the past and to welcome the future.  January is named after the Etruscan word janua which means door."

Image Credit Janus: Bible Logic

While putting in the links for this post I have been taken off on a trail of fascinating information about January, the Roman Calendar, its Greek origins, and gods from history! The ghost of Christmas yet to come has now arrived on the screen, we are still wrapped in the duvet and have some light refreshments! I will leave you now to join in the final sing song!