Although you can measure a circle beginning anywhere they often evidently did not chose to do so the easy way, i.e. starting the year with spring equinox (at 0h).

Instead they often seem to have done it the hard way, chosing a new year to be similar to a new moon, i.e. with the start of the year at the winter solstice - a time when it would be difficult to know exactly when the sun had reached its minimum. One could say this was due to that kind of self-similarity in all of Mother Nature which Mandelbrot has described.

For the Moon was like a mirror of human and other life when giving birth after a new moon. At the time of new moon somehow life (light) was recreated.

...when the new moon appeared women assembled and bewailed those who had died since the last one, uttering the following lament: 'Alas! O moon! Thou has returned to life, but our departed beloved ones have not. Thou has bathed in the waiora a Tane, and had thy life renewed, but there is no fount to restore life to our departed ones. Alas'...

If you put a nut down into a hole in the dark soil somehow life will begin anew. So darkness means death for the nut and life for the sprout.

... When viewed on end, the endocarp and germination pores give the fruit the appearance of a coco (also Côca), a Portuguese word for a scary witch from Portuguese folklore, that used to be represented as a carved vegetable lantern, hence the name of the fruit ...

It was indeed a kind of black magic:

... The 'classic' version, however, was much more detailed: the rope would seem to rise high into the skies, disappearing from view. The boy would climb the rope and be lost to view. The magician would call back his boy assistant, and, on getting no response, become furious. The magician then armed himself with a knife or sword and climbed the rope, vanishing too. An argument would be heard, and then limbs would start falling, presumably cut from the assistant by the magician. When all the parts of the body, including the torso, landed on the ground, the magician would climb down the rope. He would collect the limbs and put them in a basket, or collect the limbs in one place and cover them with a cape or blanket. Soon the boy would appear, restored ...

New year meant death for the old year and life for the next one, as is presumably visualized in Ka4-5:

And a new day would always be generated in the dark place before dawn.

This idea seems to have been expressed by the moe type of glyph.

I am uncertain as to how now to proceed from these statements, in order to unravel the rest of the year. But I believe there are several paths through this jungle. Experience so far has proven it. Perhaps the text on Large Washington Tablet could be the right path to take.