What We Can Know About 2025

People have gone mad because they couldn’t predict the future, and others have gone broke thinking they could.

But there are things we can know about 2025 within a minuscule margin of error, and it’s worthwhile to know at least some of them ahead of time, for planning purposes. Many of them are things humans cannot change. Others are things that humans could change but probably won’t, for good or bad reasons.

So here’s a non-comprehensive almanac for the year just begun. You used to be able to find these things with easy web searches but, as you may have noticed, search engines have become just about useless.

January:

• 3, Friday – This Friday, the Quadrid meteor shower will be at its height. Like most meteor showers, you have to be up (or get up) in the middle of the night to watch, because they come from outer space, not the sun. And you couldn’t see them in sunlight, anyway.
• 16, Thursday – Mars is the brightest it will be all year, and especially if the weather is clear and cold and you’re not in a city, you can observe it with the naked eye, better with binoculars or a telescope.
• 20, Monday – Of interest only to the sect of Linux users there who celebrate, Penguin Awareness Day in India. I think most people in India would be aware of any penguins they might encounter, but they should be extra-alert for them, anyway. In the U.S., Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Oh, and the new president will be inaugurated. (They were going to have the inauguration on January 1, but then they realized it can’t compete with football.)

February:

• 2, Sunday – Groundhog Day, the annual day devoted to sausage. (Get it?) Though my sister calls it Grounddog Day and devotes it to dachshunds. I like my joke better, but we’ve always been competitive that way. The day is actually in memory of Staten Island Chuck, dropped to his death by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on this date 11 years ago.
• 9, Sunday – Super Bowl, the holiest day in the year for those who belong to the football religion. Advertising Day for everyone else.
• 16, Sunday – Last month it was Mars, this month it’s Venus’s turn to be the brightest it will be all year. (If you’re in New Jersey or near a Fox reporter, there’s the added bonus of watching people doing their Chicken Little drone dance.)
• 17, Monday – President’s Day, which is a federal holiday and which we are free to celebrate or not. No actual president was born or died on February 17.

March:

• 5, Wednesday (duh) – Ash Wednesday
• 9, Sunday – Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. Set your clocks forward an hour, be late to church, and be cranky and sleepy for the next week.
• 14, Friday – There will be a total lunar eclipse visible throughout the contiguous United States, except where I am. It will be cloudy where I am.
• 17, Monday – St. Patrick’s Day.
• 18, Tuesday – Aspirin Appreciation Day, celebrated in many places; those who take part believe it should be a national holiday. (Actually, they believe it should be a national holiday repeated every day that’s right after a holiday.)
• 20, Thursday – Spring begins at 5:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
• 29, Saturday – Partial solar eclipse, at sunrise, but just for eastern Canada and New England and nearby states. Score one for Newfoundland.

April:

• 13, Sunday – Palm Sunday. Also the first day of Passover.
• 15, Tuesday – Tax Day. No, really, it is called that. It is the day your income taxes are due. You can guess who celebrates.
• 18, Friday – Good Friday.
• 20, Sunday – Easter, and the last day of Passover.
• 21, Monday – I hesitate to bring this up, but Mercury will appear farthest from the sun, meaning that those who are extremely careful will be able to see it. Those who aren’t careful will blind themselves. It will be most visible – it’s never especially bright – a few minutes before sunrise. Also, the Boston Marathon for those who care.
• 22, Tuesday – The high point of the Lyrid meteor shower. People do all kinds of interesting things with meteor showers, such as listening to them on the radio. My personal favorite is demonstrating my almost superhuman ability to pause meteor showers by pressing the shutter release on my tripod-mounted camera set for a time exposure. They resume after the time exposure is over and the shutter is closed.
• 24, Thursday – Take Your Children to Work Day.
• 25, Arbor Day – Co-workers plant a tree over the remains of those who actually did bring their children to work.

May:

• 2, Saturday – The Kentucky Derby. Also (really), National Explosive Ordinance Disposal Day.
• 5, Monday – Cinco de Mayo. Who doesn’t love mayo?
• 11, Sunday – Mothers Day.
• 17, Saturday – The Preakness Stakes. Will the winner of the Kentucky Derby make it two in a row? Do you know where the Preakness is held? Or how it differs from the Kentucky Derby? Didn’t think so.
• 26, Monday – Memorial Day. honoring those who were killed in the line of duty while in U.S. military service. It honors no one else, but few seem to realize it.
• 30, Friday – Real Memorial Day.

June:

• 7, Saturday – The Belmont Stakes. If the same horse won both the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes, the nation will be watching. Can it win the legendary “Triple Crown”? If not, of interest to a more exclusive group of fans, and their bookies.
• 14, Saturday – Flag Day. I think the flag is the Stars and Stripes, but everyone has his own flag now, so it could be that as with gender, those who celebrate are allowed to pick their own from an ever-expanding array.
• 15, Sunday – Fathers Day.
• 19, Thursday – Juneteenth. Many will wonder when this became a federal holiday. It was 2021, it turns out. I remember it primarily for the typographical error shown here, which suggests that the day honors dental hygiene. Maybe it can be a dual-purpose holiday. After all, everyone wants to look his or her best for summer!
• 20, Friday – Summer begins at 10:42 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

July:

• 4, Friday – Independence Day, when we begin the 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, and people in New Jersey and at Fox News will go completely berserk, fearing it’s an alien attack.
• 14, Monday – Bastille Day, the beginning of the end of the French monarchy and, when you get right down to it, the beginning of a downward slide from which France is yet to emerge.

August:

• 11, Monday – Victory Day, formerly V-J Day, remembers the victory over Japan in World War II. Celebrated in Rhode Island only, but poor August would be empty without it.

September:

• 1, Monday – Labor Day. Everyone celebrates work with a day off. There is no federal Day Off Day on which everyone works. I’m sure the oversight will be addressed as soon as that Juneteeth thing gets worked out.
• 21, Sunday – Saturn will be at its brightest, visible to the naked eye, better with binoculars, and better still with a telescope. The bad news is that not long before, the very thin rings of the planet will have been perpendicular to the Earth, so they won’t be as visible as viewers hope. If there’s an observatory near you, it’s worth a call to see if they will have a public viewing. If you ask early enough, it might give them the idea.
• 22, Monday – Autumn begins at 2:19 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (if we’re still doing the daylight time thing).
• 23, Tuesday – Neptune will be at its never-very brightest. You would definitely need an observatory’s hope for this one. Also, 2025’s observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

October:

• 2, Thursday – Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance and atonement, the holiest day of the year. There are fasting and other truly ascetic rules and rituals. Officially ending at sundown, it is followed in major cities by the traditional group rush on kosher Chinese restaurants.
• 4, Saturday – Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, more descriptively known as “bring your pet to church day.”
• 13, Monday – Columbus Day. A day marked with angry protests by people whose ancestors aren’t from here, either.
• 21, Tuesday – Another celestial show for insomniacs, the Orionid meteor shower will be at its most active. Coming during a new moon, its meteor display be especially vivid.
• 31, Friday – Halloween. On Friday. Saints preserve us.

November:

• 1, Saturday – All Saints’ Day, honoring those who preserved us yesterday.
• 2, Sunday – All Souls Day. A holiday more important than even the Church recognizes. At least the Church as it is organized now. Also, Daylight Saving Time ends. Set your clock back an hour. Wake up early and energetic, go to sleep depressed because sunset is right after a late lunch.
• 4, Tuesday – Election Day. For those who just didn’t get enough in 2024.
• 11, Tuesday – Veterans Day. This holiday honors everyone who has served in the U.S. military, unlike Memorial Day, which honors those who served and were killed in the line of duty.
• 17, Monday – In another suggestion that the universe thinks we’re a nocturnal species (or to keep things from getting too crazy in New Jersey and at Fox News – losing attempts, both), the Leonid meteor shower does its thing.
• 21, Friday – Uranus will be at its brightest all year. (Keep the jokes to yourself: you’re a grownup.) The same conditions and restrictions as Neptune will apply.
• 27, Thursday – Thanksgiving.

December:

• 14, Sunday – The Geminid meteor shower will be at its height (get it?) though with a fairly bright moon it won’t be the contender it could have been.
• 15, Monday – First day of Hanukkah, a relatively minor Jewish celebration but popular because it’s near Christmas.
• 17, Wednesday – Pan American Aviation Day, when aviation enthusiasts gather around the Metropolitan Life Building in New York and weep. (The MetLife Building, sprouting as it does from Grand Central Station, is really the Pan Am building, as the 16 percent of New Yorkers who haven’t fled but were born there know, just as Avenue of the Americas is really Sixth Avenue.)
• 21, Sunday – Winter begins at 10:03 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (unless the whole daylight saving time business has, please God, been abandoned by then, in which case it will be just Eastern Time).
• 22, Monday – The final meteor shower of the year. It might interest you to know that the Earth is enlarged by about 40,000 tons each year due to meteors, with most of it failing to become meteorites, which is what a meteor that hits Earth is. A fairly recent study tells us that 5,000 tons of meteor become meteorites annually. The reason that people who are still wearing face masks aren’t also wearing meteor helmets is that the helmets would unmask (get it?) their wearers as nutjobs worthy of New Jersey residence or employment at Fox News or both.
• 25, Thursday – Christmas.
• 26, Friday – The first day of Kwanzaa, a holiday that is to holidays as the 1619 Project is to history.
• 31, Wednesday – New Year’s Eve.

Then we start it all over again.

Sorry, folks, no total solar eclipse anywhere this year. We had a good one in 2024. Don’t be greedy.

For the astronomical information, but not the commentary on it, my thanks go to The Planetary Society, co-founded by my late friend and trusted advisor Bruce Murray, a smart and curious man.

New Year is a good time to give a little thought to time, its passage, and our place in its ineffable vastness. I’ve learned only two things in a lifetime of pondering it.

The first is that what seems like a long time from now really isn’t.

The second is that sometime in the future, you will wish it were now.

Congratulations. Your wish was granted. Don’t blow it this time.