When was New Year’s day founded?

New Year’s Day, First day of the new year, celebrated with religious, cultural, and social observances around the world. It is usually marked by rites and ceremonies that symbolize casting off the old year and rejoicing in the new. Most of the world recognizes January 1 as the start of a new year because the Gregorian calendar, from its papal origin in 1582, has become the international reference for treaties, corporate contracts, and other legal documents. Nevertheless, numerous religious and national calendars have been retained. For example, in the Persian calendar (used in Iran and Afghanistan) New Year’s Day falls on the spring equinox (March 20 or 21 in the Gregorian calendar). The more widely employed Islamic (Hijrī) calendar is based on 12 lunar months of 29 or 30 days; thus, the Islamic New Year’s Day gradually regresses through the longer Gregorian calendar. The Hindu new year starts on the day following the first new moon on or after the spring equinox. The Chinese new year begins at sunset on the new moon in the sign of Aquarius (late January or early February). The Hebrew calendar is based on 12 lunar months (13 in certain years) of 29 or 30 days; the Jewish New Year’s Day, or Rosh Hashanah, can fall anytime from September 6 to October 5 in the Gregorian calendar.

New Year’s Day, also simply called New Year or New Year’s, is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar. It is also celebrated in other cultures, such as the Chinese New Year which occurs based on the Chinese calendar.

Celebrations often include large displays of fireworks at midnight, welcoming in the New Year. In contemporary times these are broadcast around the world as the New Year begins in each time zone. Many traditions involve spending time with friends and family, enjoying sports and other entertainment.

The New Year is an opportunity for people to reflect on the good and bad in the year that is ending, and to resolve to do better in the coming year. Many customs involve bringing prosperity and good fortune to others, such as “first-footing” and the eating of “good-luck” foods.

History

Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) instituted the concept of celebrating the New Year in 2000 B.C.E. This celebration took place around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March.

The early Roman calendar, consisting of ten months, designated March 1 as the first day of the year.Then, in pre-Christian Rome under the Julian calendar, the day was dedicated to Janus, god of gateways and beginnings, for whom January is also named.

The January Kalends (Latin: kalendae, the first day of every month) came to be celebrated as the New Year after it became the day for the inaugurating new consuls. Romans had long dated their years by these consulships, rather than sequentially. In 153 B.C.E. they aligned this dating with the calendar year by making the kalends of January the first day of the new year. Still, private and religious celebrations at the March new year continued for some time.

As a date in the Gregorian calendar of Christendom, New Year’s Day liturgically marked the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus, which is still observed as such in the Anglican Church and Lutheran Church. Once it became the new year, however, it became a time for family gatherings and celebrations.

At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on December 25 in honor of the birth of Jesus; March 1 in the old Roman style; March 25 in honor of Lady Day and the Feast of the Annunciation; and on the movable feast of Easter. These days were also astronomically and astrologically significant since, at the time of the Julian reform, March 25 had been understood as the spring equinox and December 25 as the winter solstice. The winter solstice had long been a time of festivity in every traditional culture, and Christmas with its gift-giving blended into this mythical context.^[5]

Among the seventh-century pagans of Flanders and the Netherlands, it was the custom to exchange gifts on the first day of the new year. On the date that European Christians celebrated the New Year, they exchanged Christmas presents because New Year’s Day fell within the twelve days of the Christmas season in the Western Christian liturgical calendar. In Tudor England, 1485 to 1603, New Year’s Day, along with Christmas Day and Twelfth Night, was celebrated as one of three main festivities among the twelve days of Christmastide.^[7] There, until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, the first day of the new year was the Western Christian Feast of the Annunciation, on March 25, also called “Lady Day”.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII declared the Gregorian calendar which is widely used today. The Gregorian calendar reform also (in effect) established January 1 as New Year’s Day. Although most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately, it was only gradually adopted among Protestant countries. Most nations of Western Europe officially adopted January 1 as New Year’s Day somewhat before they adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752.