The new year - or is it?

It is the beginning of a new year, or so they say. Have you ever wondered why modern societies celebrate Jan 1 as the beginning of the calendar year? It might surprise you.  Here's the scoop garnered from several internet sites:

The celebration of the new year was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible cresent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring). The beginning of spring seemed to be a logical time to start a new year as it is the season of rebirth, of planting new crops, and of blossoming. The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days - what, and we get only one day off?

The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun. In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year.

 

The tampering, however, continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. In order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar (and his astronomers) had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days. As part of his reform, Caesar re-instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future. For quite a while Christian churches refused to participate in this celebration but eventually incorporated it their rites of passage. However some unanticipated issues emerged and a new calendar was proposed.

 

The Gregorian calendar (introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1852) was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe, with other countries adopting it over the following centuries.

The motivation for the Gregorian reform was that the Julian calendar assumes that the time between vernal equinoxes is 365.25 days, when in fact it is presently almost 11 minutes shorter. The discrepancy results in a drift of about three days every 400 years. At the time of Gregory's reform there had already been a drift of 10 days since Roman times, resulting in the spring equinox falling on 11 March instead of the ecclesiastically fixed date of 21 March, and moving steadily earlier in the Julian calendar. Because the spring equinox was tied to the celebration of Easter, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady movement in the date of the equinox undesirable. In this new calendar January 1 was again declared to be the beginning of the year.

So there you have it! 

In any event we wish you many blessings and good beginnings (or continuations) in this our new year 2013.