New Year's Day

New Year's History - New Years Gifts & Gift Baskets

In many parts of the world, New Years Day is celebrated on January 1st and it marks the start of the new year.

The greeting "Happy New Year" is typically heard for the first couple of weeks as the new year gets under way. While we start the celebration on the first day of the year, did you know that January 1st was not always the day celebrated for New Years?

The new year celebration is one of the oldest of all holidays. The holiday was first observed in ancient Babylon around 4000 years ago. Babylonians celebrated the beginning of a new year in late March and it lasted for eleven days.

In a sense, late March is a good time for the beginning of a new year to start. During that time of the year spring starts and new crops are planted.

The Romans carried on the tradition of celebrating the new year in March, however their calendar was often changed by different emperors so their calendar (quite different from our modern day calendar) soon lost synchronization with the sun. In attempt to set the calendar right, the Roman senate declared January 1st to begin the new year instead of late March.

Tampering continued until Julius Caesar established the Julian Calendar. The Julian Calendar established January 1st as the new year. In order for the calendar to synchronize with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.

As the Romans continued celebrating the new year, the early Catholic Church viewed the festivities as paganism. As Christianity became more widespread, the early church starting to have religious observances concurrently with many pagan celebrations including New Year's Day. New Years itself is still observed as the Feast of Christ's Circumcision by some.

During the time of the Middle Ages, the Church stayed opposed to celebrating New Years. January 1st itself has been celebrated by Western nations as a holiday for about the past 400 years.

One of the well known traditions of the season today is making New Year's resolutions. This same tradition also dates back to the early Babylonians. Some of the more Popular resolutions today are to lose weight or to quit smoking. The early Babylonian's most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.

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