As it turns out, the ancients enjoyed a smorgasbord of New Year's Days.
on the first of January, though that was not always the case, and it took at least two major calendrical reforms in as many millennia to cement Jan. 1 as the official start of the new year. . The Babylonians celebrated in the spring, during the first new moon after the vernal equinox; in ancient Greece, the new year began on the winter solstice; in Persia, on the autumn equinox; and in early Rome, the new year commenced in March. , who seized absolute power over Rome in 46 B.C.
," the calendar was so far out of whack by Caesar's time that in 44 B.C., Jan. 1 would have actually fallen on Oct. 14Caesar found this unacceptable. In fact, so determined was he to reboot Rome's broken calendar that he ordered 46 B.C. to be elongated to 445 days to force the calendar into proper alignment.
Caesar's reform plan called for a fixed, 12-month, 365-day calendar beginning with the first of January and ending with the last day of December. In earlier times , Romans had rung in the new year in March. And though historians generally agree that Roman civic and religious institutions had already switched to observing Jan. 1 as the conventional start of the new year long before Caesar rose to power, his, as it came to be known, was the first to codify it as such and ensured that Jan.
At least, that was the idea. Revolutionary as the Julian calendar was, it wasn't perfect, and fell out of alignment over time. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the-- basically, the calendar as we know it today -- which incorporated minor adjustments to correct the slight drift discovered in the Julian calendar.
More importantly , the Gregorian calendar also reaffirmed Jan. 1 as the official beginning of the year, which had become necessary because during the Middle Ages some kingdoms had shifted their observance of New Year's Day to alternative dates corresponding to various Christian holidays.Sources:
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