The system links January to a deity who looked in several directions at once — hence the meaning of the month: to join together what is looking apart.
The January task is to join. A person comes into the lineage in order to restore its unity: between branches that have stopped speaking to one another, between generations, between the lineage and the place where it lives.
Usually it looks like this: all the threads converge on that one person. Both sides of a quarrel phone them, whatever is not said directly is passed through them, and they turn out to be the only one who keeps in touch with everybody.
The task is hard because it never ends. Reconciling people once is not enough — the connection has to be held for years, and nobody sees any merit in it.
It is fulfilled in a simple way: as long as the person is there, the lineage does not fall apart into separate families.