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All around the world, this evening, people are celebrating the start of a new year. Everyone celebrates in a different way; different cultures call for different things. I’ll be sitting on the sofa, typing away, slightly oblivious to the whole event. Perhaps I’ll get phone calls from all of my friends tomorrow, very late tomorrow, telling me what crazy nights they had.

We celebrate the New Year on January 1. A tradition that began in the year 153 BC, before then the New Year had been observed on March 1. Why the change? First of all, they needed to add January to the calendar! In early Rome there were only 10 months in the year. This is evident when you look at the origin of the month’s names; “septem”, “octo”, “novem”, and “decem” mean 7, 8, 9 and 10 in Latin.

Numa Pontilius, a roman king, added the months January and February. Numa Pontilius is the king credited with organizing the calendar, distinguishing and recognizing between business days and days of leisure or holidays. The celebration of New Years was then moved to January for political reasons. Isn’t everything just all about politics? Roman consuls were elected for one year terms on this day. However, the practice of observing the New Year on this day did not become official until much later, during the reign of Julius Caesar.

This was hardly the end of the changes in the “New Year”. During the Middle Ages the January 1st celebration was banished all together. It was thought to be an unchristian practice, as it had rooted from pagan societies. It wasn’t until the year 1752 that our modern day New Years was restored; due to, yet another change in the calendar. The “Gregorian Calendar” was gradually accepted though out the Christian world. The American puritans were one of the last to make the change. They were very uptight.

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