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Article: A SPIRITUAL NEW YEAR THOUGH SEEN AS MOSTLY SECULAR, WELCOMING RITUALS ARE STEEPED IN RELIGIOUS TRADITION
- Article from:
- Evansville Courier & Press (2007-Current)
- Article date:
- December 28, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2002 Evansville Courier & Press. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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W ant to usher in the New Year in a new way? Try giving up the
sparkling wine and the pledge to lose weight, and instead clean your
house or spend the day in silence. That's what you might find
yourself doing if you were a Hindu on the island of Bali, where the
beginning of a new year is a religious ritual, not a reason to party.
Or consider what you might do if you were a devout Shinto in
Japan. Instead of counting down to the New Year watching Dick Clark's
annual "Rockin' New Year" from Times Square, you'd be cleansing your
heart of a year's worth of sins by listening to a gong sounded 108
times for the 108 sins a person can commit.
Or take a trip back in time, say 1,000 years or so, and ...