Volume 16 , Issue 45

History of New Year

When researching the history of New Year on January 1st we find it is a relatively new phenomenon. The earliest recording of new year celebration was believed to have been in Mesopotamia, about 2000 B.C. and celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March.

It seems a variety of other dates were also tied to the seasons and used by various ancient cultures. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice.

The early Roman calendar, March 1rang in the New Year, and was designated as the new year. The calendar back then had just ten months, beginning with March. September through December, our 9th through 12th months were originally positioned as the seventh through tenth months. [Septum is Latin for "seven," octo is "eight," novem is "nine," and decem is "ten."]

January joins the calendar for the first time and was celebrated on January 1st in Rome about 153 B.C. In fact, the month of January did not even exist until around 700 B.C., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius, added the months of January and February.

The new year was moved from March to January because that was the beginning of the civil year, the month that the two newly elected Roman consuls, the highest officials in the Roman republic, began their one year tenure.This new year date was not always strictly and widely observed, though. Sometimes the new year was still celebrated on March 1.

In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar introduced a new, color based calendar that was a vast improvement on the ancient Roman calendar, which was a lunar system that had become wildly inaccurate over the years. The Julian calendar decreed that the new year would occur with January 1, and within the Roman world, January 1 became the consistently observed start of the new year.

It was in the Middle Ages that January 1 was abolished. In medieval Europe the celebrations accompanying the new year were considered pagan and unchristian like, and in 567 the council of tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on December 25, the birth of Jesus; March 1; March 25, the feast of the Annunciation; and Easter.

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform restored January 1 as new year's day. Although the Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately, it was only gradually adopted among Protestant countries. The British did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire and their American colonies still celebrated the new year in March.
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