Happy New Year!

[No Elephants]

The Romans celebrated January 1 as New Year's Day, but for the political new year. Newly-elected Roman officials would first take office on January 1, which was chosen arbitrarily for that purpose.

Many other cultures would celebrate the New Year at a more practical and meaningful time, namely, the Spring solstice, around March 21. That is also the start of the zodiac year, all you Aries out there being considered the infants of the zodiac.

How insulting!

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRf8tZ_tA1v1XpgXlTkPs5YCYtr_4lHk0UBjUh7w6flooP5TP8cg

Some celebrated the start of the New Year on March 25, supposedly the anniversary of the Anunciation of the birth of Christ.

At that time, celebrating on January 1 was considered "popish" or "papish" by non-Catholics and therefore literally anathema to the pious Protestants, Anglicans, Puritans, etc. of the world.

England and the colonies switched over to a calendar in which January 1 began the year in September of 1752. Hence 1753 was the first time the colonies celebrated New Year on January 1.

The whole issue of the Western calendar is complex and, after I wore out Google trying to figure it all out on the Internets, someone wrote an entire book about it. However, this summary does a pretty good job of hitting some of the major highlights.

http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/gregorian_2.htm

The independence day of many nations is January 1, which also marks the Triumpho of the Revolution in Cuba (1959)

The Emancipation Proclamation was effective January 1, 1863. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

Both Betsy Ross and Paul Revere were born January 1 (before the colonies celebrated that day as New Year, although the switch came during the lifetimes--for Betsy, on her first birthday, in fact) So was J.D. Salinger, the reclusive late author with whom I so was oh, so impressed when I was a school girl, though I am no longer sure why.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1

And it will mark the first day of 2013m which I hope is better year for everyone everywhere.

[Enthusiast]

1. That is some interesting stuff, No Elephants.

That was some world when the popes were in charge. The doctrine of infallibility! Donald Rumsfeld had such a doctrine during the Iraq War.

Lots of things impress school girls. They are by nature easily impressionable. I kid. I am not a chauvinist.

[No Elephants]

2. School kids have to be impressionable or they would never learn diddly.

Popes then were in charge of only the Western world.

The way popes got to be in charge of the calendar:

As mentioned in the OP, the Roman calendar--in terms of when a year began and ended--was a hopeless mess and this affected both civil events, like change in officeholders on January 1, and religious observances.

A Roman bureaucrat was in charge of the calendar. At some point, Julius Caesar got elected or appointed to the relatively minor bureaucratic post whose duties included being in charge of the calendar. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Julius became Emperor of the Roman Empire.

For some reason, he never let go of the function when he became Emperor. Either that, or he grabbed it back after he got a load of the reliable Egyptian calendar. In any event, as Emperor (and god), Julius was, as Emperor, performing a task that he had performed as a relatively minor bureaucrat.

Emperors after Julius for some reason also kept control of the calendar, which was much improved, but still not totally reliable. Caesar Augustus did a temporary fix and got the month of August named after him.

Then comes Emperor Constantine, who, depending on which version you believe, either becomes an extremely devout Christian or pretends to become an extremely devout Christian. And so begins the Holy Roman Empire and the process of Emperors ceding one power of theirs after the Roman calendar to the Bishop of Rome.

Hence, the calendar gets changed by papal bull!

[Enthusiast]

3. Good post...nt