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Felix Annus Novus! (Happy New Year)

Another year has gone by (seriously, where did 2021 go?) and once again a new year has arrived with much promise and hope. This year, I am excited to begin my college journey, my first step outside the proverbial nest. I'm super excited to see what the new year brings!

In honor of the new year, here's a look at how Classical civilizations celebrated the beginning of the year and its significance. (Some of the information is rehashed from last year's new year post.)

New year celebrations have taken place for over 4000 years when Mesopotamians began celebrating it around 2000 BCE. It wasn't on January 1, however, because they did not have a calendar, but on the vernal equinox in mid-March, when the length of the day equals the length of night. Other civilizations picked other astronomically significant dates as the beginning of the new year – Egyptians on the fall equinox, and Greeks on winter solstice. Many people in India still celebrate the new year in spring, as I wrote in a post back in April.

We owe the modern New Year's celebration to the ancient Romans, although they too began with celebrating it in spring – on the Ides of March (March 15) when the all-important consuls took office. The Romans celebrated it as the festival of Anna Perenna – the goddess of the New Year, which meant the beginning of spring.

The Romans were also the first to have a calendar. The first calendar had 10 months beginning on March 1. It was Julius Caesar who decided to add two months before March to be more accurate based on the solar cycle. 

Julian calendar

Thus, the New Year came to be celebrated two months before March 1, and was called Calendae Ianuariae. The first day of the month was called calendar by the Romans, and the first month, Ianuarius was named after Janus, the god of beginnings and endings. His two-faced character, with one face toward the previous year and the other towards the new year, is the symbolic representation of the new year.

Janus, the god of beginning and end

January 1st thus became the beginning of the western calendar around the time of Julius Caesar ~ 46 BCE. The ancient Romans celebrated it in much the same way we do – with singing and dancing and wishing happiness through a kiss and a handshake. They also exchanged sweet gifts like honey, dates, and figs because they believed that if they ate this on the first day, the rest of the days would be equally sweet! 

New Year's Day celebrations continued until the medieval ages when it was abolished by the Europeans as a pagan ritual and Christmas Day was picked as the new year instead. January 1 was reinstated as New year's day in the late 1500s with the establishment of the Gregorian calendar that we now follow. 


Sources:

https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-religion/roman-feasts/new-year-in-ancient-rome/

https://www.infoplease.com/culture-entertainment/holidays/history-new-year


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