Some more New Year's Day facts.
Since every society we know of has celebrated the New Year, although on different days, some religious rituals have been associated with it. But Christian Churches, as the following would indicate, were not too happy with New Year's Day. Seems it was harder to coopt than the winter solstice (Christmas). Of course, we should remember that the Puritans did not celebrate Christmas either, which they regarded (correctly) as a pagan holiday in disguise.
New Year's Day, Sat., Jan. 1. A federal holiday in the United
States, New Year's Day has its origin in Roman times, when
sacrifices were offered to Janus, the two-faced Roman deity
who looked back on the past and forward to the future.
The Romans continued to observe the new year on March 25, but their
calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the
calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.
In order to set the calendar right, the Roman
senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the
beginning of the new year. But tampering
continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC,
established what was come to be known as the
Julian Calendar. It again established January 1
as the new year. But in order to synchronize the
calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the
previous year drag on for 445 days.
Although in the first centuries AD the Romans
continued celebrating the new year, the early
Catholic Church condemned the festivities as
paganism. But as Christianity became more
widespread, the early church began having its
own religious observances concurrently with
many of the pagan celebrations, and New
Year's Day was no different. New Years is still
observed as the Feast of Christ's Circumcision by some denominations.
During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New
Years. January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only
about the past 400 years.
Other traditions of the season include the making of New Year's resolutions.
That tradition also dates back to the early Babylonians. Popular modern
resolutions might include the promise to lose weight or quit smoking. The early
Babylonian's most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.
The tradition of using a baby to signify the new year was
begun in Greece around 600 BC. It was their tradition at
that time to celebrate their god of wine, Dionysus, by
parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual
rebirth of that god as the spirit of fertility. Early Egyptians
also used a baby as a symbol of rebirth.
Although the early Christians denounced the practice as
pagan, the popularity of the baby as a symbol of rebirth
forced the Church to reevaluate its position. The Church
finally allowed its members to celebrate the new year with
a baby, which was to symbolize the birth of the baby
Jesus.
The use of an image of a baby with a New Years banner
as a symbolic representation of the new year was brought
to early America by the Germans. They had used the effigy since the
fourteenth century.
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