This Newsletter edition is going out to you on January 1st, the first day of our New Year. We thought it might be interesting to learn about the history of this event over the last 4,000 years.

The actual date we know as the first day of the “New Year” has changed throughout the course of history several times. The earliest recording of a New Year celebration is believed to have been around 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia. The specific date is unknown, but it was sometime in mid-March during the vernal equinox. The Egyptians, Phoenicians and the Persians all began their New Year with the fall of equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice.

The early Roman calendar initially designated that March 1st was the first day of the New Year. The change to the calendar designating January 1st as the beginning of the New Year occurred in Rome in 153 B.C.; however, it was not strictly or widely observed until 46 B.C. Julius Caesar abolished the lunar-based calendar that year in preference of a far more accurate solar-based one. This Julian calendar decreed that, within the Roman world, the new year would begin on January 1.

During medieval times in Europe, the religious powers decided that the celebration of the New Year was a pagan event and went against the tenants of Christianity and, so, again the date of the New Year was to suffer changes! During this period, the date for the beginning of the year bounced around, varying from Christmas day to Easter and the Feast of the Annunciation.

In 1582, most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar reinstating January 1 as the beginning of the New Year we know today. It took almost 200 years to catch on in most of the world as the Protestant countries and their colonies, such as those held by the British Empire including America adopted this reform more gradually. Until 1752, these regions continued to celebrate March as the New Year.