The arrival of a new year, although a universal celebration, varies in date and rituals according to different cultures. In our case, we celebrate the arrival of the new year according to our Gregorian calendar, that is, according to the way of counting history in years or centuries, starting from the birth of Christ

But for all human beings, the beginning of a new year holds profound meaning and messages valid for all humanity. Because, beyond being a change of date, this celebration represents many of our enduring yearnings for change, renewal, and hope for better times.

Because the start of a new year, in every culture, is an opportunity for reflection, for taking stock, for making good intentions, for closing chapters, and for welcoming new beginnings in the various areas of human existence. We celebrate the new year with the joy of being able to rewrite our personal, family, and social history, leaving the old and the bad behind in anticipation of better stories and a better world.

All of these calls for moments of reflection, self-examination, and introspection. A new year, a new beginning, asks us all to pause, to correct our course, evaluating and giving thanks for what we have experienced and learned, with a view to addressing the challenges that await us all in the new year. Only a personal assessment and inventory of achievements and mistakes made can help us—through personal growth—to make the coming year a truly “new” year.

It is a tradition that, for the new year, we humans, filled with the best intentions, make resolutions and set goals and objectives. This custom has its roots in antiquity, when individuals and communities promised the gods to fulfill their goals in exchange for blessings. Today, the custom remains, as a way of committing to oneself to achieve new personal, family, or professional goals.

The arrival of the New Year is also an occasion to gather with family and friends. It’s a time to strengthen emotional bonds, to share joys and dreams, and to keep traditions alive. In an increasingly individualistic world, with more and more people living in isolation and solitude, this celebration fosters connections and links us through the noblest values ​​that reside in the human heart.

But the celebration of a new year also reminds us of and brings us joy for the opportunity to begin again, to improve, to change, to embark on new paths. This profoundly anthropological experience fills us with hope, the driving force of our lives and our history. For it is the hope for better days and a new and better future and world that fuels our daily struggles and fills our days on earth with enthusiasm and meaning.

These aspirations and struggles, this celebration and this hope for better times, are not experienced in isolation but as a community.  This means that we are not alone in our pursuits and dreams, and that achieving the good, new, and better things we hope for must be a collective, generous, collaborative, committed, and supportive conquest: a permanent achievement for all.

Furthermore, the New Year’s celebration is an opportune time for gratitude, to be thankful for all that is good and to learn from the less good. And so, by being able to be grateful and to discover goodness in all that we are, have, and experience, we may be happy.

Our social, national, and global reality is full of challenges, with much to change and improve. But changing institutions and social structures begins with changing the heart of every human being.

And since the celebration of the New Year is a reflection of the deepest and best aspirations of humankind, let us take advantage of the beginning of 2026 to travel better paths that lead us to the realization of better personal, family, and social stories.

Let’s make the arrival of a new year a truly new year. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!