Select Page

Job Seekers - Achev - Connecting Skilled Newcomers with Employers 2
Job Seekers - Achev - Connecting Skilled Newcomers with Employers 2
Freedom Heart Ukraine
Job Seekers - Achev - Connecting Skilled Newcomers with Employers

New Year’s Day

Jan 2, 2017 | Newpathway, Featured, The View From Here - Walter Kish

Like many people on this globe, I celebrated New Year’s Day on January 1 as 2016 came to a close. The old year, together with its trials and tribulations was put to bed, and a new year ushered in with a fresh dose of hope and optimism for better times. It is a ritual that most people think has been around since time immemorial, however they would be wrong. January 1st has not always been viewed as the first day of the new year. In fact, the whole concept of a new year is totally arbitrary and artificial, and has only become universally accepted in recent centuries.

Of course, mankind has long been aware of the concept of an astronomical year composed of a cycle of four seasons, even before the year unit could be accurately measured. It has only been in the past few centuries that science has allowed us to measure the year precisely. For the record, a year under the current Gregorian
calendar is 365.2425 days.

In recorded history, the earliest mention of New Year’s celebrations are from 2,000 BC in Mesopotamia, and they celebrated it at the vernal or spring equinox which falls around March 20. The ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians and Persians celebrated New Year at the autumnal equinox which fall on or about September 20. From a practical point of view, setting the boundary between years at one of the equinoxes makes a lot of sense.

It was the Romans who began the practice of deeming January 1 as the start of the New Year. Incidentally, it was also they who coined the names of most of the months that we still use today. January was named after the Roman god Janus, who was distinguished by having two faces. One face looked back into the past, and the other face looked into the future. It was therefore symbolically appropriate that they would designate January 1 as the start of the Roman administrative year, marking the boundary between the past (the old year) and the future (the new year). 153 BC thus became the start of the current practice of having January 1 being considered the first day of the new year.

It should be noted that, as the Roman Empire sank, this New Year practice went dormant for a while. The early Christians who came to dominate the next couple of millennia, at various times celebrated New Year’s Day on Dec. 25, March 1, the Feast of the Assumption in August, and even on Easter.

It was only with the calendar reforms of Pope Gregory that created the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, that January 1 became generally accepted throughout the western world as the official start of the New Year. But even this took several centuries to propagate throughout the world. Greece, for example, did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1923.

Many Middle Eastern and Asian countries still maintain different traditional calendars based on the lunar cycle or other criteria. The Chinese, Vietnamese and a few other Asian countries have a calendar based on the lunar cycle which results in the New Year being celebrated in late January or early February. The Islamic new year (Hijri) varies in date, usually falling somewhere in the September to December period. In 2017 for instance the Islamic New Year will fall on September 22. The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) always falls 163 days after Passover, which is a variable date itself, resulting in Rosh Hashanah occurring somewhere between September 5 and October 5. On the Indian sub-continent, the New Year is ushered in in mid-April. Whatever religious or cultural customs may dictate, by and large, almost all countries in the world now employ the Gregorian calendar with its January 1st New Year for administrative and civil purposes.

There are many notable events in history that occurred on Jan. 1. In 1858 Canada dropped the the quirky British pound, shilling, pence system and began using a decimal currency similar to that of the Americans. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery in the U.S. In 1901, Australia became an independent commonwealth.

In many cultures and traditions, it is particularly auspicious and lucky to be born on New Year’s Day. Among many famous people to have this day as their birthday are Lorenzo de Medici, Paul Revere, J. Edgar Hoover, Canadian fathers of Confederation Charles Fisher and John Mercer Johnson, and Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. And of course, on a personal note, my eldest daughter Zenia was born on January 1, which gives me an extra reason to celebrate this day.

Share on Social Media

Announcement
Pace Law Firm
2/10 Years of War
Borsch

Events will be approved within 2 business days after submission. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Manage Subsctiption

Check your subscription status, expiry dates, billing and shipping address, and more in your subscription account.