When the growing cycle is complete the desire to leave the human confusion of the past year behind is not new; rather it coincides with the original meaning and purpose of New Year.
Over a year, mistakes and misdeeds confuse life, the web of life becomes worn and torn and the world needs to be renewed. The New Year is not a simple turning of a calendar page, but a symbolic return to the beginning of time in order to restore to life its original potentials.
In this Archival conversation from 2011 Evan Pritchard explains what he observed in one indigenous culture when an elder recognized confusion had entered a community.