Women's new year

Today, and January 15th annually, is Little New Year, or Koshogatsu, 小正月 in Japan. But it goes by another name too; women's new year or onna shogatsu 女正月. Which interestingly is something similar to an event in my home country of Ireland;

In my home country of Ireland, we mark the annual occurence of "Little Christmas", which is the official end to Christmas festivities, on January 6th. It is an event observed by many other countries, but Ireland is particularly known for it. Moreover, in Ireland, like Japan, we have another name for the day. We call it "Nollaig na mBan", which is the Irish language for "women's Christmas"! So just like Japan, we refer to the closing of the end of year festivities as belonging to or being of women! 

In both countries historically the women's new year and women's christmas acknowledged how much work women put into the New Year and Christmas celebrations respectively, and offered a day of rest and respite from the holiday festivities. I chose a photo from my personal collection of green tea and black tea to represent Japan and Ireland respectively and to depict "a break"!