The idea of a year is pretty much arbitrary - not in the physical sense though - it is well-established (to the dismay of anti-Copernicans) that the earth completes a revolution around the sun in a fixed amount of time, roughly equal to what we calculate as 365.something days (thanks to our aversion to fractions, we simplify with some leap year math to make it 365 or 366 days). There is no contesting that fact, I think - it is just a continuum of time split into periods based on our undertanding of astronomical arrangements between a planet and its star.

But then what makes a year arbitrary? It’s the same idea that makes 0 degrees in a circle arbitrary - a random point on its circumference can be said to be the 0 deg point - but after this, any other point on the circumference can then be defined with reference to this point, based on the angle subtended at the centre. Likewise, 1st January corresponds to an arbitrary starting point that was chosen when the earth was at some location in its path around the sun - but the rest of the year for eternity thereafter is defined in time based on this 1st January. In theory, we could just make 1st June the new 1st January and take it from there; what transpires between that 1st January and 1st June can just be eliminated from history and we can pretend that it never happened.

Too radical an idea? But 2020 was too radical a year. Maybe we could just pretend it never happened. Or use this.

Tomorrow could very well be made the 1st of January, 2020.

But yes, there are several administrative problems associated with erasing a year from history books and from people’s memories. Rather, administrative problems are the least of concerns - there are endless thought experiments and media associated with this idea and it’s been a thing of fanstasy for years on end - and there’s no dearth of possibilities one can think of or already have thought of, in terms of what could go wrong. There’s just too much to explore.

Maybe it’s just better to swallow the bitter pill and try (and hope) for a better 2021 in whatever way possible. This year was bad for some, worse for others, and certainly unlike any other in recent times. Nothing has collectively disrupted so many billions in such a short timespan. But there’s hope. Just enough of it.