And end of the year is the most busy days. We have to clean up our rooms, and if you have some debts you should pay. For someone to collect the money he lent, and for the most people it is time to pay the debt. And after cleaning up everything, spiritual and physical, we decorate New Year's decoration. Those should be done before twelve o'clock. And after twelve o'clock there is no need for you to pay back the money you owed.
So usually it is pretty exciting week. This kind of custom still in Japan and each one of us, rather we enjoy this kind of activity. We understand each other. We fool ourselves in some way and enjoy the last day of the year. This idea is based on Buddhist way of understanding life. Moment after moment we should renew our life, we should not stick old idea of life, or way of life, we should renew it, our life day by day, especially at the end of the year. Especially at the end of the year we should completely renew our feeling and completely renew our car. If we stick to old ideas always, or if you have no chance to renew it, it is rather difficult to renew your way of life. Some encouragement is necessary if you always repeating same thing over and over again, then even though you have no feeling of sticking to old way of life, actually you are confined in old way of life. Some excitement or some occasion is necessary. -- from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 68-12-29