Haiku poets consider New Year's to be a season. R.H. Blyth, in volume 2 of his marvelous work on Haiku, says "When the Lunar Calendar was in vogue, January the first was what is now about the beginning of February." Spring beginnings in other words, and many of the Japanese haiku for the New Year are full of the imagery of spring. Blyth goes on to say of this New Year, "All things are the same, yet all is new. The sameness and the difference; in the unity of these two lies an unnameable, ineffable meaning which the following verses rejoice to express." He is referring to haiku that follow, of which the one above is my favourite.