New Year's Day

So fundamental to everyday life are ways of marking the passage of time that most people feel their own calendar customs have been virtually ordained by nature. The Gregorian, or New Style, calendar now used throughout most of the world starts the year on January 1. Although that date has been recognized as New Year's Day in more and more countries since the "new" calendar was first introduced in 1582, it is actually a rather unnatural day for beginning the year, since it has no special place in the sun's cycle. January 1 is connected with neither the winter nor the summer solstice, nor with the spring or autumn equinox—four dates that do relate to the change of the seasons and which historically related to significant festivities and religious rites. The ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians, for example, began their year with the autumn equinox (on or about September 21 in the Gregorian calendar), and the Greeks for many centuries used the winter solstice (December 21 or 22 in the Gregorian calendar). Other societies, such as the Chinese, base the new year on the lunar cycle rather than the solar cycle. Chinese New Year, for example, takes place any time between January 21 and February 19, inclusive, and always on the new moon.

The United States inherited January 1 as the beginning of the new year from the English and other European settlers, who themselves came to embrace that date over the course of roughly two thousand years. The ancient Romans, under a very old and inaccurate calendar, had originally taken March (Martius) as the first month of the year. But in 153 BCE, the Roman state declared January 1 thenceforth to be New Year's Day, turning the 11th month, Januarius, into a new first month. In a pattern that would often be repeated, however, the common people remembered their old traditions and for a long time still considered the year to end with the celebration of the Terminalia on February 23, after which intercalation (the insertion of a varying number of days) was made to offset errors in the calendar and so complete the year.

By the end of the Roman republic, the calendar was once more highly confused, since officials had tampered with it to cut short or extend magistrates' terms of office. In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar, as pontifex maximus and dictator, instituted necessary reforms. Under his new calendar, subsequently named the Julian calendar, January 1 was reinstituted as New Year's Day. The new calendar became effective the following year, 45 BCE.

The Romans traditionally celebrated the Feast of Janus, the god of doorways and of beginnings who is depicted as looking both forward to the future and backward to the past, on the first of January. This deity was certainly suitable to the New Year, and to begin the year auspiciously, the Romans offered sacrifices to him. They also exchanged greetings with kin and acquaintances and gave New Year's gifts, called strenae, after Strenia, the goddess of strength. According to tradition, the custom of giving strenae originated in the eighth century BCE, when the Romans presented the king of the Sabines with branches from the trees consecrated to Strenia, as tokens of good omen. Strenae also means "omens" in Latin, and this semantic link captures the superstition and expectancy with which most peoples have greeted the New Year. As with the Romans and Sabines, New Year's festivities throughout the world still tend to be occasions for smoothing over quarrels and reaffirming human ties.

In time, the Romans replaced with more elaborate gifts the branches of bay and palm traditionally gathered on the first day of the year. During the days of the Roman Empire, courtiers and others gave the emperor New Year's presents of great value, which enriched his personal coffers and became a source of political corruption. Aware of the burden that these traditional gifts placed on the people, the Emperor Claudius issued a decree limiting the amounts to be given. In addition, the New Year's Feast of Janus was also marked by masquerades and public entertainments, not to mention the occasional Roman orgy.

After their conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, the Roman emperors continued for some time the pagan traditions of New Year's. The young church, however, increasingly condemned these observances as scandalous and forbade Christians to participate. Much of the struggle between the growing faith and the old pagan culture centered around such public observances. As it gained strength, the church purposely planned Christian festivals in competition with pagan ones. It established Christmas on December 25 (then the winter solstice) in counterpoint to the Mithraic rites and the Roman Saturnalia, for example. Following the biblical account, the Feast of the Circumcision of the infant Jesus then fell eight days later, on January 1, competing conveniently with the Feast of Janus and New Year's Day. Saint Ambrose declared, "We fast on this day [Circumcision] that the heathen may know we condemn their pleasures." Even in modern times, some branches of the Christian church celebrate January 1 as the Feast of the Circumcision or as the Solemnity of Mary.

The church remained strongly hostile to the old pagan New Year throughout the Middle Ages. As a result, January 1 was weakened and its observance as New Year's Day may have disappeared for some centuries in parts of Western Europe. Certainly, political fragmentation and poor communications after the collapse of Rome encouraged diversity concerning the beginning of the calendar year. Between the 9th and the late 11th centuries, Christmas gained wide acceptance as the date for changing the year. Gradually, December 25 thus replaced such earlier New Year dates as January 1, the Franks' March 1, and the late Roman Empire's September 1, which also continued in use in the Byzantine Empire for many centuries. From Anglo-Saxon times until the reign of Henry II in the mid-twelfth century, the new year began on Christmas in England, although William the Conqueror briefly tried to institute January 1.

In the High Middle Ages, growing veneration of the Virgin Mary made March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, or Lady Day (the supposed date of Jesus' conception), an increasingly great church festival, and in some lands attention focused on this day as an appropriate beginning for the year. The practice of starting the new calendar year from the Feast of the Annunciation spread from the early 11th century on. In England, March 25 became established as the beginning of the calendar year from the late twelfth century, and this was also the practice in most domains of the French king and in Florence and Pisa. December 25, however, continued to begin the year in much of the Holy Roman Empire and in Scandinavia. Only on the Iberian Peninsula did January 1 begin the year through the Middle Ages, and even there the dating was changed to December 25 in the fourteenth century. By contrast, from the reign of Philip II, king of France, in the early thirteenth century, the French court began the new year on the movable feast of Easter. With all its inconveniences, this usage spread to districts bordering France on the north and east. However, in folk tradition throughout these areas, the New Year usually continued to be Lady Day or Christmas.

Although scattered attempts to revive the practice of starting the year on January 1 were made as early as the mid-thirteenth century, little came of such efforts until the sixteenth century. Then, at the threshold of the modern period, a significant movement developed to restore the ancient civil New Year of January 1. The interest of humanists and their patrons in the literature of antiquity during this period encouraged rulers to imitate the ancient Roman New Year. The increasing administration of government by laymen instead of by priests may also have encouraged detachment of the civil New Year's from the festivals of the church. As early as 1532, the Estates of Holland declared January 1 New Year's Day. In 1556, the king of Spain issued a similar decree for his lands; in 1558, the Holy Roman Emperor did the same for the Empire; and in 1563 King Charles IX of France followed suit, though the reform did not take effect until it was registered by the Parlement of Paris in 1567. In 1575, Protestant Geneva also declared January 1 as the beginning of the New Year.

By this time, however, the whole Julian calendar was seen to be badly in need of reform. The most pressing of the difficulties was that over the approximately 1,600 years that the Julian calendar had been in use, a small discrepancy between the actual length of the solar year and the length of the year by the Julian calendar had added up to approximately ten days. With the advice of astronomers, Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the needed changes in 1582, rectifying the above discrepancy by ordering ten calendar days to be dropped. Among other things, his New Style, or Gregorian, calendar also caused the year to begin on January 1 wherever the new calendar was adopted (except in a few Italian cities).

Although the calendar reformers made this change on ecclesiastical grounds related to the church's reckoning of Easter, its effect was to strengthen the revival of the ancient pagan date of January 1 for the New Year. Where January 1 had already become New Year's Day (as in Holland, Spain, Portugal, France, and the Holy Roman Empire), adoption of the Gregorian calendar simply caused the year to begin ten days earlier, on January 1, New Style, instead of on January 1, Old Style. General acceptance of the Gregorian calendar was complicated, however, because by 1582 many European governments no longer acknowledged papal authority. In predominantly Roman Catholic states and provinces, and in the Protestant provinces of Holland and Zeeland as well, the new calendar was instituted rapidly between 1582 and 1584, but most Protestant states would not comply. In 1599, the king of Scotland ordered that thenceforth January 1 should begin the year in his realm, but the Scots celebrated New Year's Day on January 1, Old Style, through 1752, in which year the Gregorian calendar was instituted for all Great Britain by act of Parliament. Denmark and Norway, the Protestant states of Germany, the provinces of the United Netherlands, and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland all introduced the new calendar in 1700 or 1701, and presumably thereafter celebrated New Year's Day on January 1, New Style, although there are indications that the Swiss may not have used that date to begin their calendar year before 1740.

England, Ireland, and the American colonies began the calendar year on March 25, Old Style, up through 1751, a period extending nearly a century and a half beyond the first permanent English settlement in the New World. By act of Parliament, however, the year 1751 was shortened to 282 days (March 25 to December 31), and the year 1752 was ordered to begin on January 1, Old Style. Thus, the dates January 1 to March 24, 1751, were nonexistent in England and the colonies. To complete the Gregorian reform for Great Britain, the by then requisite 11 days were dropped from the calendar between September 2 and 14, 1752, so that New Year's Day in 1753 was January 1, New Style. Curiously, there were more than a few violent riots in London due to this changeover, started by crowds of people who were convinced that the eleven days being dropped from the calendar were in effect 11 days by which their lives were being shortened. Sweden's first January 1 New Year, New Style, came in 1754, the reformed calendar having been introduced there in 1753. The maverick cities of Florence and Pisa adopted January 1 as the beginning of the year after 1749, but the Republic of Venice held out for its unique date of March 1 until its demise in 1797.

In Russia, Peter the Great, in a ukase of 1699, ordered that the new year begin thenceforth on January 1, Old Style, but the Gregorian calendar was not introduced into Russia until 1918, after the Russian Revolution. Thus the Russians' first January 1 New Year to be observed under the New Style calendar was in 1919. Greece and Greek Orthodox communities made the change to the Gregorian, New Style, calendar in 1924. However, some of the Eastern Orthodox national churches resisted the change much longer, with the result that their New Year observances, on what the old Julian calendar said was January 1, fell on what the Gregorian calendar in the twentieth century regarded as January 14. Tenacious adherence to the Julian calendar was particularly notable among Russian Orthodox churches. Not until the beginning of the 1970s, for instance, did the change to the new calendar become really widespread among Russian Orthodox churches in the United States.

This involved history of the beginnings of the year suggests the relative unimportance of coordinated timing for medieval and early modern European societies. Political rivalries also contributed to the variations, for styling the year in a particular way was an indication of political independence.

During the centuries when Christmas began the calendar year, the old Roman New Year of January 1 may have been retained in some manner in the Christmas festivities, which lasted at least for the following week through January 1. Scattered evidence indeed suggests that for many centuries when it did not begin the calendar year, January 1 was nonetheless referred to as New Year's Day by the English. The Roman custom of lavish New Year's gifts to rulers would seem to have given kings a particular stake in keeping January 1 alive as New Year's Day, even when they styled their calendars otherwise. Queen Elizabeth I was able to obtain almost her entire wardrobe and jewels from such gifts, and British rulers before and after her benefited from the custom of New Year's gifts until about the end of the eighteenth century.

Gift-giving among the people at New Year's rather than at Christmas has varied with the centuries. The custom in England is thought to have originated in earliest British history, with the Celtic druids' distribution of branches of the sacred mistletoe as New Year's gifts to the people. The invading Saxons are also believed to have exchanged gifts at New Year's. Certainly under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs it was the custom for all classes to give New Year's presents to friends and relatives. Among ordinary folk, favorite gifts were multicolored eggs, nuts, apples, or oranges studded with cloves, special cakes of mincemeat, and plain or gilded nutmegs. Women in the wealthier classes were given books, ornamented gloves, or brooches, and from the practice of sometimes giving a monetary equivalent of the article came the term "pin money" for the little bit of cash that women were allowed to spend as they pleased during the centuries when they lacked economic rights. By the mid-19th century, however, the New Year's gift-giving had died out in England, and it is very rare in the United States today. There are other countries, however, such as Japan, where gift-giving or the exchange of greeting cards as part of New Year's is the common practice.

As today, New Year's festivities in the past often lasted from late on New Year's Eve to the early hours of New Year's Day, with celebrators bidding the old year farewell and welcoming the new at midnight in one combined set of gestures. One of the most dramatic Old World customs, which was carried to the Americas, was to toll the passing of the year just before midnight. This custom can now be seen in such events as the countdown from Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve that is typically broadcast live on American television.

From colonial Dutch practice, the presidents of the United States followed a long-observed custom of welcoming the New Year by holding an open house on January 1. George Washington began the tradition with the first presidential reception on New Year's Day, January 1, 1791, in New York (then the capital of the country), and John and Abigail Adams carried it to the new capital of Washington, DC. Their first reception was held when the White House was still unfinished. Thomas Jefferson, the first president of the opposing party, later continued the custom. The presidential New Year's reception remained a major social event in the capital through January 1, 1933, under President Herbert Hoover. But in 1934, because his physical condition made it difficult to stand in a long receiving line, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt discontinued the custom. It has never been revived in any significant way, at least not as an annual ritual, although of course the president and the first lady frequently hold such social functions (private and otherwise) as their personal schedules and the affairs of state permit.

The custom of paying New Year's calls generally declined in the United States during the twentieth century. This practice reached its greatest height in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Those who intended to receive their friends and acquaintances sent their names to the newspapers with the hours when they would be at home, so that callers might know which homes would welcome them. These lists filled many columns and included the names of famous socialites and ordinary citizens alike. However, the tradition was eventually absorbed into the practice of holding New Year's Eve parties, and the invention of the telephone made personal house calls more and more of an anachronism.

Today, Americans are primarily event-oriented rather than tradition-oriented about New Year's Day. While gift-giving and important family gatherings still prevail in some cultures, many Americans devote at least part of New Year's Day to watching, in person or on television, a choice of spectacles. These events include college football bowl games and parades such as the Tournament of Roses Parade.

The first of January is a legal holiday in every state of the Union, the District of Columbia, and in all US territories and possessions. It begins the fiscal year for most US taxpayers and is the civil New Year for all US citizens. But certain groups celebrate additional versions of the New Year, in keeping with their ancestral and religious traditions. The Chinese New Year falls in either January or February; the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, in either September or October; and the Islamic New Year is on the first day of the month of Muharram (all according to lunar reckonings).

Bibliography

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Nicks, Denver. "Why We Celebrate New Year's Day on January 1." Time, 26 Dec. 2018, time.com/4161658/new-year-eve-day-january-history-celebrate/. Accessed 1 May 2024.

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