New Years All

Celebrating New Year is as universal and as ancient as man’s desire for cleansing and renewal, thus New Year celebrations in the early days were in spring, nature’s symbol of rebirth.

Yet today’s New Year’s Day in the dead of winter in the Western hemisphere became the beginning of the year.  This developed through an evolution of concepts, mostly from Rome.

There was a Roman republican calendar whose first day of the year starts on March 1 as declared by the Roman senate, which was observed by the ancient Romans as New Year.  In 153 BC, the first day became January 1, later given more weight in 46 BC by the Julian calendar established by Julius Caesar.

While the Romans celebrated New Year in the early centuries AD, the Church at the time condemned the celebrations as pagan.  But Christianity spread, and as with other pagan customs like the Christmas tree, the Church blended its religious observances with those of pagan festivities.  So the Christian world celebrates New Year.

January 1 as the beginning of the year was eliminated in favor of March by the Council of Tours in AD 567.  Early medieval Christian Europe then had March 25 as its New Year, the feast day of the Annunciation.

January’s fate was finally sealed for the West in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar, the current calendar that the world now uses, that made January 1 the first day of the year.  Roman Catholic countries were the first to adopt this.  Other countries followed, from Scotland in 1660 to Russia in 1918.  In-between were other countries in Europe like Denmark and Germany.

It is ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq) that holds the record of the earliest known observance of New Year in about 2000 BC.  By today’s Gregorian calendar, that ancient civilization observed New Year in mid-March, with the new moon nearest the spring or vernal equinox, one of the two times each year when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are of equal length in most of the earth.

Also by today’s calendar, other ancient civilizations held different dates of New Year. The Assyrians had theirs in mid-September, the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Persians on the autumn equinox of September 21, while the Greeks observed theirs on the winter solstice of December 21 until about 500 BC.

The Jewish religious calendar observes New Year on the first day of the month of Tishri, which could be any day from September 6 to October 5, when God opens the Book of Life.  The day is observed with restrained joy.
The world of Islam also has a movable date of New Year’s Day, which shifts eleven days backward through the seasons each year.  Muslims observe New Year quietly, highlighted by special prayers and the retelling of the story of Mohamed’s Flight to Medina.

India, with its size and cultural diversity, celebrates New Year at least four different times a year, usually with various springtime festivals in the months of March and April.

Buddhist monks exorcise ghosts and receive gifts in Thailand’s three-day New Year festivities in March or April.  Water is thrown at one another when people meet as a playful extension of the symbol of cleansing.

Chinese New Year is celebrated officially for a month beginning in late January or early February.  It opens by throwing out demons with racket and clamor, thus the use of firecrackers, which were invented by the Chinese.  Tibetans meanwhile observe the New Year in February with feasts and visits while the usual monastic restraints for their monks are relaxed.
Japan celebrates New Year with ceremonial housecleaning, feasting, visits, and gifts on January 1-3.  The belief is that good or bad fortune during the first few days of the New Year may signify one’s fortune throughout the year.

Most western countries celebrate New Year with feasts and personal resolutions, while we, in the culturally mixed milieu that we are in, celebrate New Year with a blend of East and West practices, adding our own versions for local color, highlighted by the Christian tradition of attending mass, and firecrackers, not really to drive demons away as for the sheer noise of merrymaking.

Whether or not we are with Ambrose Bierce who defines a year as “a period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments,” the true essence of New Year, which is rebirth and strengthening, is needed.  Luckily it is in us all.

(31 Dec 2006)