New Year

• 1. Introduction

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  New Year is one of the oldest shared human observances, yet the date it falls on depends entirely on which calendar you follow. On January 1, billions of people mark the turn of the Gregorian year, but on any given night somewhere on earth a different community is also counting down to its own new year, according to a lunar cycle, a solstice, an equinox, or the flooding of a river. The world runs on dozens of overlapping new year traditions, and almost none of them agree. How did January 1 come to dominate global civil life? Why do so many cultures still hold to entirely different start dates? And what does it mean that a country like England officially changed its new year no fewer than three times over the course of history? Those questions carry us from ancient Rome through medieval Europe and outward across Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

• 2. Rome and January 1

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  Before 153 BC, Roman consuls likely took office on May 1, and the year turned accordingly. From 222 BC to 154 BC the date shifted to March 15. Then, in 153 BC, the Roman Senate anchored the consular year to January 1, and that date carried enormous administrative weight: it was when civil officers assumed their posts and when the Senate convened each year. Julius Caesar's Julian calendar, which took effect in 45 BC, confirmed January 1 as the official first day. The date stuck through the Roman Empire, east and west, and persisted in territories that went on using the Julian calendar long after Rome itself collapsed. The civil logic was straightforward: the year began when the government began.

• 3. A Wandering New Year in Medieval Europe

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  After Rome's hold loosened, Western Europe fractured into competing start dates, each tied to a feast day of the Christian calendar. Annunciation Style placed the new year on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, and spread across much of the continent through the Middle Ages and beyond. Christmas Style began the year on December 25 and held in Germany and England until the eleventh century. Easter Style, used across Europe and especially in France from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, had the distinct disadvantage of a movable start: because Easter shifts every year, the same calendar date could appear twice in one year. Those two occurrences had to be distinguished as "before Easter" and "after Easter". In England, the Norman Conquest in 1066 briefly introduced January 1, but by 1155 the country had reverted to March 25, and it stayed there until 1752. Scotland moved first: by order of the King's Privy Council on the 17th of December 1599, Scotland switched to January 1 starting with the 1st of January 1600. England and Scotland shared a crown from 1603 and merged their kingdoms in 1707, yet they observed different new years throughout that period. The result was that when the Acts of Union were recorded in England in early 1707, the English date was technically the 6th of March 1706, because under the English calendar the year had not yet turned. The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 finally resolved the confusion, bringing England, Wales, Ireland, and the Colonies to Gregorian reckoning and fixing January 1 as the civil new year with effect from the 14th of September 1752.

• 4. The Long Spread of January 1

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  Adoption of January 1 as the civil new year was not a single global event but a slow, country-by-country process spread across centuries. The Holy Roman Empire (roughly modern Germany) moved first in 1544. Spain, Portugal, and Poland followed in 1556. France adopted the date in 1564 via the Edict of Roussillon. Scotland arrived in 1600. Russia held out until 1700, when Tsar Peter I issued decrees in December 1699 ordering the change. Japan made the switch in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration, abandoning a lunar calendar that counted twelve months of 29 or 30 days each, totaling about 354 days per year. The Republic of China adopted January 1 in 1912. Greece waited until 1923. Turkey followed in 1926. Thailand did not complete the shift until 1941. The table of adoption years runs from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth, a span of nearly four hundred years for a date that people often assume was universal long before it was.

• 5. Lunar and Lunisolar Traditions

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  Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, falls on the new moon of the first lunar month, placing it somewhere between the 21st of January and the 21st of February in any given Gregorian year. Traditional Chinese reckoning combined twelve Earthly Branches, each represented by an animal, with ten Heavenly Stems linked to the five elements. That pairing cycles fully every 60 years. The Korean New Year, Seollal, follows the same lunar first day and is considered more meaningful to Koreans than January 1, despite January 1 being the official civil start. Vietnamese New Year, called Tet Nguyen Dan, usually falls on the same day as Chinese New Year because Vietnam uses a similar lunisolar calendar. The Tibetan New Year, Losar, falls somewhere between January and March. The Islamic calendar is a purely lunar system with twelve months totaling about 354 days, which means its New Year, occurring on Muharram, arrives roughly eleven days earlier each successive Gregorian year. Two Islamic New Years fell within the single Gregorian year 2008.

• 6. Equinox and Solar New Years

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  Iranian New Year, called Nowruz, lands on the precise moment of the northward equinox, ordinarily March 20 or 21. Nowruz is shared by Zoroastrians, the Bahai tradition (which calls the same day Naw-Ruz), and communities across Central Asia where it is known as Nauryz and typically celebrated on March 22. The Babylonian New Year also began with the first new moon after the northward equinox, and ancient celebrations reportedly lasted eleven days. At the other solar extreme, the Balinese New Year, Nyepi, is a day of silence observed from 6 am until 6 am the following morning: no one is permitted on beaches or streets, Bali's only airport closes entirely, and the exceptions extend only to emergency vehicles and women in labor. Non-Hindu residents of Bali observe the silence as well. In the French Revolutionary Calendar, in use from 1793 to 1805 and briefly revived under the Paris Commune in 1871, the new year landed on the southward equinox, falling on the 22nd of September 23, or 24.

• 7. Spring in South and Southeast Asia

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  Many calendars across South and Southeast Asia converge on a narrow window between April 13 and 15. Tamil New Year, known as Puthandu, is celebrated on the first of Chithrai in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which falls on the 13th of April 14, or 15. In the temple city of Madurai, the occasion is marked by the Chithrai Thiruvizha festival at the Meenakshi Temple, along with a large exhibition called Chithrai Porutkaatchi. Bengali New Year, Pôhela Boishakh, falls on the 1st of Boishakh (April 14 or 15) and is observed in Bangladesh and multiple Indian states including West Bengal and Tripura. Punjabi and Sikh communities celebrate Vaisakhi on April 14. Nepal's new year falls on the 1st of Baisakh, between April 12 and 15, according to the Bikram Sambat calendar. Across Southeast Asia the same period brings the Water Festival, observed from April 13 to 15 in Burma (Thingyan), Thailand (Songkran), Laos (Pi Mai Lao), and Cambodia (Chaul Chnam Thmey). Originally a gentle sprinkling of water as a sign of respect, the festival's timing during the hottest month of the year has led in many places to enthusiastic drenching of passersby. The Sinhalese New Year adds a distinctive element: astrologers calculate the exact moment the sun crosses from the House of Pisces into the House of Aries, and both the end of the old year and the start of the new one are determined by that calculation, with a neutral period called the nona gathe in between.

• 8. Autumn, Religious, and Ancient New Years

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  Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a two-day holiday commemorating the culmination of the seven days of Creation. In Jewish tradition, honey represents a sweet new year, and at the traditional meal apple slices are dipped in honey while blessings are recited. The Marwari New Year, Thapna, is observed on the day of Diwali, the last day of Krishna Paksha in the Hindu month of Ashvin. The Gujarati New Year, Bestu or Nao Varas, falls the day after Diwali, marking the start of a new fiscal year for the Gujarati community. The ancient Egyptian New Year, called Wep Renpet, appears to have originally aligned with the return of the star Sirius to the night sky on July 19 in the proleptic Julian calendar, which coincided with the early stages of the Nile's annual flood. Because the Egyptian calendar had no leap years until Roman emperor Augustus reformed it, the celebration gradually drifted through the entire solar year over the course of two or three 1,460-year Sothic cycles. The Coptic and Ethiopian New Years, Neyrouz and Enkutatash, descend from this ancient Egyptian tradition and now fall on September 11 in most years between 1900 and 2100, or September 12 in years preceding a leap year. The Orthodox Christian liturgical year begins on September 1, a date tied to the Indiction, the taxation-cycle counting system used across the Roman and Byzantine Empires, which may explain why the early church anchored its calendar there rather than on the civil January 1.