[MR] Wikipedia: New Year’s Day

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Happy New Year. I sincerely hope that 2026 is prosperous and meaningful to
you and to your families.

Today most of the world recognizes January 1 as the beginning of each year
for general purposes, though there are many vestiges of earlier practices (
Tết in Vietnam, for example, but why not have an extra holiday or two?
Sounds good to me).

The year didn't always begin with January 1. The new year was celebrated,
or at least acknowledged, on various dates which were often tied to lunar
reckoning or to important religious holidays such as Christmas or Easter in
Christendom. Locally, it didn't matter much, and most people just got on
with their lives. It became more important as commerce and government
became more sophisticated, meaning when the Roman Empire spread its
tentacles across Europe.

January 1 was fixed as the year's beginning with the adoption of the Julian
Calendar in 45 BCE throughout the Roman Empire. The month of January
just happened to be named for Janus, the god of doorways and new
beginnings, so January 1 must have seemed appropriate. The Julian calendar
had flaws with those pesky extra days in leap years, and by the Renaissance
was pretty far out of whack.

Enter Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced the . . . uh . . . modestly-named
Gregorian calendar in 1582, which more or less fixed the problem with leap
years. [Ever wonder why the Vatican has its own observatory? Calculating
Easter and other holy days was, and still is, important to the Church.]
This correction was accomplished by simply whacking 11 days from October
from 1582. Due a delay in getting the word out, the Spanish Empire chopped
their days from December. Eventually most of Catholic Christendom fell into
line.

Ah, but there were exceptions. Some Protestant countries resisted, fearing
this "Catholic innovation", and Eastern Churches usually didn't pay much
attention to what the Pope might say. Scotland came on board in 1600, but
England and the British colonies (including North America) held out with
the Julian calendar until 1752, and considered the new year to start on
March 1 per the pre-Julian Roman reckoning. The 11 day chop came out of
September 1752.

Islam, Judaism, and non-European cultures had/have their own ways of
reckoning, but the Gregorian calendar is used today for secular purposes
throughout most of the world.

Yours Aye,

Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆
Continuing a crusade to keep the original Merry Rose relevant and in
business.