Many New Years

The first time that New Year’s Day was celebrated on January 1st was in 45 B.C., when Caesar redid the Roman calendar basing it on the sun instead of the moon.

He added some days to the year in order for it to work and declared every January 1st to be the start of the new year. But he miscalculated the length of the solar year and declared an extra day in February every four years. That was actually too often so that by the Middle Ages the calendar was about 10 days off. In the 1570s that the calendar was finally refined with leap years in the correct places, and since then, January 1st has been celebrated as New Year’s Day.

The ancient Egyptians used a lunar calendar exclusively until they adopted their own solar calendar. The lunar calendar was then used for their religious festivals and rituals, but for their daily lives, the ancient Egyptians used a solar calendar which contained 365 days per year.

Of course, people have celebrated a New Year’s Day before Caesar and not all calendar new years begin in January still today.

Around 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, the new year was celebrated in mid-March, around the time of the vernal equinox.

Iranians and Balinese still celebrate the new year with the spring equinox.

The Chinese New Year is based around the lunar cycles, and it can fall between late January and late February.

The Celtic New Year began on November 1st, after the harvest.