New Year


New Year is the time or day at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one.
Many cultures celebrate the event in some manner and the 1st day of January is often marked as a national holiday.
In the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar system today, New Year occurs on January 1. This was also the first day of the year in the original Julian calendar and of the Roman calendar..
During the Middle Ages in western Europe, while the Julian calendar was still in use, authorities moved New Year's Day, depending upon locale, to one of several other days, including March 1, March 25, Easter, September 1, and December 25. Beginning in 1582, the adoptions of the Gregorian calendar has meant that many national or local dates in the Western World and beyond have changed to using one fixed date for New Year's Day, January 1.
Other cultures observe their traditional or religious New Years Day according to their own customs, sometimes in addition to a civil calendar. Chinese New Year, the Islamic New Year, the traditional Japanese New Year and the Jewish New Year are the more well-known examples. India and other countries continue to celebrate New Year on different dates.

By month or season

January

The new year of many South and Southeast Asian calendars falls between April 13–15, marking the beginning of spring.
The early development of the Christian liturgical year coincided with the Roman Empire, and later the Byzantine Empire, both of which employed a taxation system labeled the Indiction, the years for which began on September 1. This timing may account for the ancient church's establishment of September 1 as the beginning of the liturgical year, despite the official Roman New Year's Day of January 1 in the Julian calendar, because the indiction was the principal means for counting years in the empires, apart from the reigns of the Emperors. The September 1 date prevailed throughout all of Christendom for many centuries, until subsequent divisions eventually produced revisions in some places.
After the sack of Rome in 410, communications and travel between east and west deteriorated. Liturgical developments in Rome and Constantinople did not always match, although a rigid adherence to form was never mandated in the church. Nevertheless, the principal points of development were maintained between east and west. The Roman and Constantinopolitan liturgical calendars remained compatible even after the East-West Schism in 1054. Separations between the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical year and Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar grew only over several centuries' time.
During those intervening centuries, the Roman Catholic ecclesiastic year was moved to the first day of Advent, the Sunday nearest to St. Andrew's Day. According to the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, the liturgical year begins at 4:00 PM on Saturday preceding the fourth Sunday prior to December 25. By the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic general calendar provided the initial basis for the calendars for the liturgically-oriented Protestants, including the Anglican and Lutheran Churches, who inherited this observation of the liturgical new year.
The present-day Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar is the virtual culmination of the ancient eastern development cycle, though it includes later additions based on subsequent history and lives of saints. It still begins on September 1, proceeding annually into the Nativity of the Theotokos and Exaltation of the Cross to the celebration of Nativity of Christ, through his death and resurrection, to his Ascension and the Dormition of the Theotokos. This last feast is known in the Roman Catholic church as the Assumption. The dating of "September 1" is according to the "new" Julian calendar or the "old" Julian calendar, depending on which is used by a particular Orthodox Church. Hence, it may fall on 1 September on the civil calendar, or on 14 September.
The Coptic and Ethiopian liturgical calendars are unrelated to these systems but instead follow the Alexandrian calendar which fixed the wandering ancient Egyptian calendar to the Julian year. Their New Year celebrations on Neyrouz and Enkutatash were fixed; however, at a point in the Sothic cycle close to the Indiction, between the years 1900 and 2100, they fall on September 11 during most years and September 12 in the years before a leap year.

Historical European new year dates

During the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire years beginning on the date on which each consul first entered the office. This was probably May 1 before 222 BC, March 15 from 222 BC to 154 BC, and January 1 from 153 BC. In 45 BC, when Julius Caesar's new Julian calendar took effect, the Senate fixed January 1 as the first day of the year. At that time, this was the date on which those who were to hold civil office assumed their official position, and it was also the traditional annual date for the convening of the Roman Senate. This civil new year remained in effect throughout the Roman Empire, east and west, during its lifetime and well after, wherever the Julian calendar continued in use.
In England, the Angle, Saxon, and Viking invasions of the fifth through tenth centuries plunged the region back into pre-history for a time. While the reintroduction of Christianity brought the Julian calendar with it, its use was primarily in the service of the church to begin with. After William the Conqueror became king in 1066, he ordered that January 1 be re-established as the civil New Year. Later, however, England and Scotland joined much of Europe to celebrate the New Year on March 25.
In the Middle Ages in Europe a number of significant feast days in the ecclesiastical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church came to be used as the beginning of the Julian year:
Southward equinox day was "New Year's Day" in the French Republican Calendar, which was in use from 1793 to 1805. This was primidi Vendémiaire, the first day of the first month.

Adoptions of January 1

It took quite a long time before January 1 again became the universal or standard start of the civil year. The years of adoption of 1 January as the new year are as follows:
CountryStart year
Holy Roman Empire 1544
Spain, Portugal, Poland1556
Prussia, Denmark. and Sweden.1559
France 1564
Southern Netherlands1576
Lorraine1579
Dutch Republic1583
Scotland1600
Russia1725
Tuscany1721
Great Britain, Ireland and
British Empire		1752
Japan1873
China1912
Greece1923
Turkey1926
Thailand1941

March 1 was the first day of the numbered year in the Republic of Venice until its destruction in 1797, and in Russia from 988 until 1492. September 1 was used in Russia from 1492 until the adoption of the Anno Domini notation in 1700 via a December 1699 decree of Tsar Peter I.

Time zones

Because of the division of the globe into time zones, the new year moves progressively around the globe as the start of the day ushers in the New Year. The first time zone to usher in the New Year, just west of the International Date Line, is located in the Line Islands, a part of the nation of Kiribati, and has a time zone 14 hours ahead of UTC. All other time zones are 1 to 25 hours behind, most in the previous day ; on American Samoa and Midway, it is still 11 PM on December 30. These are among the last inhabited places to observe New Year. However, uninhabited outlying U.S. territories Howland Island and Baker Island are designated as lying within the time zone 12 hours behind UTC, the last places on earth to see the arrival of January 1. These small coral islands are found about midway between Hawaii and Australia, about 1,000 miles west of the Line Islands. This is because the International Date Line is a composite of local time zone arrangements, which winds through the Pacific Ocean, allowing each locale to remain most closely connected in time with the nearest or largest or most convenient political and economic locales with which each associate. By the time Howland Island sees the new year, it is 2 AM on January 2 in the Line Islands of Kiribati.