Here in the United States, most of us are gearing up to celebrate the New Year on January 1st. That celebration takes a variety of forms, some secular and others religious, filled with regional and even personal traditions.
Some people always watch the ball drop in Times Square, even if they have to watch it on television. Some of us eat black-eyed peas, kiss our loved ones at midnight, or sing “Auld Lang Syne,” to name just a few of the many ways the holiday is celebrated.
However, not everyone in the world celebrates the new year in the same way, or even on the same day. Social media has led to an increasing focus on the Chinese New Year, even in the West, which can fall anywhere from January 21st to February 21st on the Gregorian calendar. What is the Gregorian calendar, you may ask? Don't worry, we’ll get to that in a moment.
Why do these variations exist, and where do our New Year’s celebrations come from? That’s just what we’re here to explore…
The Gregorian Calendar
In February of 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a papal bull which replaced the earlier Julian calendar (named for Julius Caesar) with a new “Improved Calendar,” which came to be known as our modern Gregorian calendar. What’s the difference?
Like the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar is what’s known as a “solar calendar,” with years that are 365 days long, in accordance with the Earth’s revolution around the sun. There’s just one problem with a solar calendar: the Earth’s revolution is not exactly 365 days long—it’s more like 365.2422. That’s why we have “leap years,” to help keep dates that mark solar cycles (such as equinoxes) from drifting off of the actual solar events they commemorate.
One of the major differences between the Gregorian and the former Julian calendars is how they treat these leap years. In the Julian calendar, leap years took place every four years without exception. This was because the Julian calendar operated on the assumption that a solar year was actually 365.35 days long. The Gregorian calendar adjusted this to something closer to 365.2425 by implementing more complex rules for leap years.
While much of the world has adopted the Gregorian calendar and, with it, the January 1st New Year, however, there are still countries and religious traditions that use a revised version of the Julian calendar, while other nations and faiths have their own calendars, and may celebrate the beginning of the new year at different times.
But Why January?
The Julian calendar was, itself, an update of the previous Roman calendar. Proposed by Julius Caesar around 46 BCE, the Julian calendar was intended to standardize the calendar across the Roman Empire. It also established January 1 as the first day of the year. Why pick that date?
Despite the fact that January is one of the coldest months here in the Northern Hemisphere, it actually marks the time when the Earth is closest to the sun, an event known as perihelion, which occurs because the Earth’s orbit is elliptical.
So, if we’re so close to the sun, why is it so cold? The slight variation in Earth’s orbit doesn’t actually have much effect on our seasons, which are instead caused by the axial tilt of the Earth. That is to say that it’s cold in January because the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun at that time. In the Southern Hemisphere, January is the middle of summer, not winter.
The decision to make January the first month of the year was probably partly inspired by the proximity of the Earth and the sun. However, it was likely also chosen to honor the god Janus, for whom the month is named. Depicted with two faces, one gazing forward and the other looking behind, Janus was the god of beginnings and endings—a fitting patron for the start of a new year and the end of the old one.
Rosh Hashanah, Chinese New Year, and Others
Though it has been widely adopted around the globe, not everyone uses the Gregorian calendar, however. While the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar, many other calendars are either true lunar calendars, such as the Islamic calendar, or what are known as “lunisolar calendars.” A true lunar calendar measures months by lunar cycles—the spans between syzygies, such as new moons and full moons. Thus, a lunar month might be between one full moon and the next.
However, these lunar months don’t align with the solar seasons, meaning that in a true lunar calendar, which months fell during winter versus spring would gradually drift over the years. To avoid this, lunisolar calendars “reset,” often on the first, second, or third new moon after the winter solstice. This is why the Chinese New Year occurs on the new moon of that calendar’s first lunar month, sometime between January 21st and February 21st on the Gregorian calendar.
A Chinese New Year celebration (2024).
Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsOther traditions from around the world place the beginning of the new year on different dates. Rosh Hashanah is a two-day observance in Judaism that marks the “head of the year” and uses a lunisolar calendar. Rosh Hashanah usually falls in September or October of the Gregorian calendar and is said to commemorate the end of the seven days during which God created the Earth. The traditional Rosh Hashanah meal includes apples and honey.
Many Southeast Asian countries celebrate their New Year sometime in April, in accordance with their own calendars, while ancient cultures may have ushered in the new year in March, around the spring equinox, when day and night are of equal length.
Even countries that use the Gregorian calendar didn’t always agree on when the new year should begin. England and the British Empire did not adopt January 1st as New Year’s Day until the British Calendar Act of 1751. Before that, the first day of the year fell on March 25th, tied to the holiday of the Annunciation, commemorating the archangel Gabriel’s message to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus.
Featured image: Canva
