Old New Year

• 1. Introduction

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  The Old New Year arrives on the 14th of January, a date most of the world has long since forgotten as anything special. Yet for millions of people across Russia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Wales, and stretches of the Middle East, it marks a genuine turning of the year. How can a holiday celebrate a new year that already happened? The answer lies in a calendar dispute that quietly never ended.

  The Julian calendar, once standard across Europe and the Christian world, fell out of official use over centuries as governments switched to the Gregorian calendar. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic made the switch in 1918. But the Eastern Orthodox Church never followed, continuing to mark its feasts by the older reckoning. The result was a world split between two timekeepers, and a New Year that, depending on where you stand, falls on either the 1st or the 14th of January.

  This documentary follows the Old New Year across continents: through bonfires in North Macedonia, fireworks fired from the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, children singing door-to-door in the Welsh valley of Cwm Gwaun, and a comedy-drama that kept the Russian tradition alive on stage for many years.

• 2. Two Calendars, One Holiday

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  The Julian calendar is older than the Gregorian by more than a thousand years, and the gap between them accumulates over time. By the 20th and 21st centuries, the 1st of January on the Julian calendar falls on the 14th of January in the Gregorian system. That thirteen-day difference is why the Old New Year is sometimes called the Orthodox New Year: it tracks the liturgical world of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which still uses the Julian calendar for its feast days.

  The label "Orthodox" can mislead, though. The Eastern Orthodox Church's own liturgical year does not begin in January at all. It begins in September. The connection to Orthodoxy is really a historical one: it harks back to the era when governments in Russia and Eastern Europe ran their civic calendars by Julian reckoning, and the church has simply never left that system behind.

  In the Middle East, the holiday carries a different name entirely. Among Alawites and Middle Eastern Christians, it is known as Ra's as-Sanah or Ras el-Seni. The tradition persists across Palestine, Jordan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and other countries in the region, showing that the Julian calendar's reach extended far beyond the Orthodox heartlands of Eastern Europe.

• 3. Russia's Double New Year

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  Russia switched officially to the Gregorian calendar in 1918, but the Russian Orthodox Church held to the Julian calendar, and the culture found a way to hold both dates at once. Russians now celebrate what they informally call the New New Year on the 1st of January and the Old New Year on the 14th of January, two weeks later.

  The New New Year on the 1st is a full public holiday: fireworks, elaborate meals, and festivities that blend secular tradition with Orthodox Christmastide customs including Rozhdestvo. The Old New Year, by contrast, is quieter. For many families it is a nostalgic gathering that closes out the long holiday cycle, which includes Eastern Orthodox Christmas on the 7th of January. Traditional meals, singing, and celebratory drinking mark the occasion, but the scale is generally more modest.

  The two-holiday system means Russians spend the better part of two weeks in a sustained period of festivity, moving from secular celebration through religious observance and then closing with the Julian New Year. Eastern Orthodox Christmas on the 7th of January sits squarely in the middle of that arc, tying the secular and the sacred together across the full span.

• 4. Fire and Coin in the Balkans

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  In North Macedonia, the Old New Year is known by two names: Stara Nova Godina, meaning Old New Year, and Vasilica, a name that translates as St. Basil. Late on the 13th of January, people gather outside their homes in the centers of their neighborhoods and light large bonfires. Traditional Macedonian music accompanies the fire, and food and drink are shared communally.

  For those who stay indoors, a different tradition applies. Families bake a home-made pita with a coin hidden inside, and whoever finds the coin in their portion is believed to carry good luck through the coming year. The ritual of the hidden coin is old and widely shared across cultures, but here it is specifically anchored to the Julian New Year rather than to any other date.

  The holiday does not stay within North Macedonia's borders. Macedonians in Australia, Canada, and the United States observe it as well, particularly in communities served by the Macedonian Orthodox Church. In Serbia, the occasion is called the Serbian New Year, and Belgrade typically hosts a single large concert in front of either City Hall or the National Parliament. Fireworks are prepared and fired by the Serbian Orthodox Church from the Church of Saint Sava, where crowds gather. Restaurants, clubs, and hotels fill to capacity, and the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose traditional adherence spans Serbia including Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia, anchors the celebration in its liturgical calendar.

• 5. Hen Galan and Cwm Gwaun

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  Wales offers one of the most distinctive Old New Year traditions in the world, centered on a practice called Hen Galan. The Welsh situation was unusual: even before the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 formally adopted the 1st of January as New Year's Day in England and Wales, most Welsh communities had already been treating that date as Dydd Calan, their New Year's Day. So when the official calendar shifted, Wales did not face the confusion that disrupted English communities. The older Julian New Year simply continued alongside the new one as an informal holiday.

  In the Cwm Gwaun valley in Pembrokeshire, children are released from primary school to travel house to house, singing traditional Welsh-language songs. The householders originally gave food in return, something practical to help families through the winter months. In more recent years the gift has shifted to sweets and money. Any resident who refused to welcome the children and offer a reward was thought to earn a "llond y ty o fwg," which translates as a house full of smoke, meaning a year of bad luck.

  The night before Hen Galan also sees festivities, with the Grade II-listed Dyffryn Arms, known locally as Bessie's, serving as a center for local celebrations. Broader Hen Galan traditions include the Mari Llwyd, the making of apple charms called perllan, and the collecting of calennig. The most well-known celebrations are held at Cowbridge, Aberystwyth, and Cwm Gwaun.

• 6. Scotland's Burning Clavie

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  Scotland has its own version of the Old New Year, fixed not on the 14th of January but on the 12th. In the first half of the 20th century, large segments of the Scottish Gaelic community still observed the feast. Today it is marked in South Uist and Eriskay under the name Oidhche Challaig, and in Glenfinnan as Oidhche Challainn.

  The coastal town of Burghead in Morayshire celebrates the eve of the Old New Year with a fire ceremony called the Burning o' the Clavie. The name "Clavie" refers to the object burned, and the event draws the community together on the night before the 12th of January. The Berber communities of North Africa share a similarly shifted date: the Berber New Year, which runs close to the Julian calendar, is observed on the 12th of January in some areas because of accumulated calendar errors, rather than on the 14th.

  The same day that falls as Old New Year in various traditions is also celebrated in Tamil-speaking lands as Thai Pongal, marking the moment when the sun ends its southward journey and begins moving northward again. That astronomical anchor is independent of any church calendar, yet it lands on the same winter date, pointing to how many cultures have long recognized this stretch of January as a moment of transition.

• 7. The Old New Year in Russian Art

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  The playwright Mikhail Roshchin wrote a comedy-drama simply called The Old New Year in 1973. The play was staged for many years, keeping the holiday's name and its quiet cultural weight present in Russian theatrical life.

  Roshchin later adapted the work into a screenplay for a 1980 television film. That film featured music by Sergey Nikitin and poetry lyrics by Boris Pasternak, and it was released by Mosfilm studios. The combination of Pasternak's poetry with Nikitin's music in a film about the Julian New Year tied the informal holiday to some of the most recognizable names in 20th-century Russian culture.

  The film's existence as a Mosfilm production means it reached a mass Soviet audience at a time when the Old New Year was already a widely enjoyed informal occasion. The comedy-drama format suited the holiday: not a solemn religious observance, but a warm family moment that Russians describe as nostalgic, the closing bracket of a long festive season that begins on the 1st of January and runs through Orthodox Christmas on the 7th before ending at the Julian New Year on the 14th.