Good question.

The Answer is, “It’s taken a while.”

Four thousand years ago, around 2,000 B.C., in ancient Iraq, the New Year began on the vernal equinox in March. You may recall that “vernal” is Latin for “spring” and “equinox” means “equal night” because on that day the hours of light and dark are equal in duration. See the blog post of March 21, 2016.

So, New Year’s Day was the first day of spring (March 20th in this year of 2019), which makes a great deal of sense, because the first day of spring was the start of the new growing year — the grass was sprouting, flowers were blooming, the sun was shining and birds were singing (at least in the northern hemisphere, which is the locus of the present discussion).

But this very reasonable approach didn’t last forever.

In 753 B.C., Romulus became the first King of Rome in what is modern-day Italy. Romulus didn’t particularly like the then current Roman calendar because the counting of the months began on March 1 and ended on the last day of December. There were only ten months (“decem” means “ten” in Latin), and then a long cold dark time between the end of December and the beginning of March, a time with no name — which made some sense because there wasn’t much you could do back up to that time but wait for spring. Still, it was a bit untidy, especially for a growing empire with administrators at work all the time trying to record and date accurately a conquering here, there and everywhere. The expanding empire needed more months.

In 715 B.C., the second King of Rome, Numa Pampilius, fixed that. Numa officially established the months of January and February and stuck those new months right where the long uncharted dark had been. Now we had a regular year. Hooray, Numa Pampilius!

For more background on the new months and Kings Romulus and Numa, see the blog post of February 27, 2014:

Well, those administrators stepped back into the fray again in 153 B.C. and began appointing new Roman Consuls on January 1st. It’s not clear why they did this. Perhaps it was because everyone used to stop their old jobs at the end of December for the winter off-time, and our administrators wanted to keep the empire going by appointing folks to their new positions with a strong admonishment to, “Get to work. Now! No time off in this empire.” We may never know for sure, but Romans had already begun to date their years by these consulships. “Out with the old, in with the new,” you might say. So, the new date of appointing consuls became the date of the new year, and January 1 became New Year’s Day.

Between 153 B.C. and 1582 A.D., a lot of people messed with New Year’s Day. Some accepted the new date of January 1, while others continued to keep the March date of the vernal equinox. After Jesus of Nazareth, there were moves to Christmas Day (December 25th today) and Easter (today the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox — you can only imagine what those Romans administrators would say to a floating date). It all became quite confusing with people asking one another, “When does the New Year start?”

Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII effectively said, “Enough is enough.” Gregory cleaned up the old Roman calendar, which had become known as the Julien Calendar (after Julius Caesar, of course), instituted his newer version, which is called the Gregorian Calendar (the calendar we use today), and restored January 1st as New Year’s Day. Hooray, Pope Gregory!

Still, it took quite a while for folks to accept the Gregorian Calendar and January 1 as the agreed date for New Year’s Day. The British weren’t all in for some time. Even in the early American Colonies, the March date was New Year’s Day. This stopped about 1752. Since then, for some 267 years now, January 1 has been the start of the New Year in what is the modern-day USA.

Whew! That is a long way to 2019, which began on January 1st. Just a few days ago. I hope.

Happy New Year, wherever, whenever and however you celebrate it.

Perhaps, it is the thought that truly counts.

Except for administrators.

Of course.

Grandpa Jim