Pagan new year is Samhain, celebrated on Oct 31st.
History
The western world celebrates the new year on Jan. 1 in the early weeks of winter. For thousands of years before Julius and the Roman Senate got involved, the new year was celebrated with the first edible crops of the season or the first new moon.
In 46 B.C.E. the Roman emperor Julius Caesar first established January 1 as New Year’s day by letting the previous year run to 445 days rather than the traditional 365. . Janus was the Roman god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking forward and one back. Caesar felt that the month named after this god (“January”) would be the appropriate “door” to the year.
As Christianity spread, pagan holidays were either incorporated into the Christian calendar or abandoned altogether. By the early medieval period most of Christian Europe regarded Annunciation Day (March 25) as the beginning of the year.
After William the Conqueror (AKA “William the Bastard” and “William of Normandy”) became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the date established by the Roman pagans, January 1. This move ensured that the commemoration of Jesus’ birthday (December 25) would align with William’s coronation, and the commemoration of Jesus’ circumcision (January 1) would start the new year.
William’s innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.
About five hundred years later, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII abandoned the traditional Julian calendar. By the Julian reckoning, the solar year comprised 365.25 days, and the intercalation of a “leap day” every four years was intended to maintain correspondence between the calendar and the seasons. Really, however there was a slight inaccuracy in the Julian measurement (the solar year is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds = 365.2422 days). This slight inaccuracy caused the Julian calendar to slip behind the seasons about one day per century. Although this regression had amounted to 14 days by Pope Gregory’s time, he based his reform on restoration of the vernal equinox, then falling on March 11, to the date had 1,257 years earlier when Council of Nicaea was convened (March 21, 325 C.E.). Pope Gregory made the correction by advancing the calendar 10 days. The change was made the day after October 4, 1582, and that following day was established as October 15, 1582. The Gregorian calendar differs from the Julian in three ways: (1) No century year is a leap year unless it is exactly divisible by 400 (e.g., 1600, 2000, etc.); (2) Years divisible by 4000 are common (not leap) years; and (3) once again the New Year would begin with the date set by the early pagans, the first day of the month of Janus – January 1.
In much of India, Nava Varsha is celebrated in March or April, just as in the most ancient civilizations.
Sikhs celebrate Hola Mohalla in March; ditto for Persian Nowruz.
As celebrated in China and southeast Asia, Lunar New Year still has a floating date, the first day of the first lunar month.
Customs
If your head really hurts on New Year’s Day, you could point your finger at the Babylonians who started this new year revelry nonsense. Though the ancient Romans added the idea of alcoholic excess, or at least perfected it. In fact, feasting on lucky foods is the most ancient new year tradition
The Babylonians celebrated with a feast and by returning borrowed farm equipment as it would soon be needed to work the fields.
Julius Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets. In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgies—a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.
Any way you slice it, New Year’s is among the very oldest and most persistent of human celebrations. The new year celebration is an observance of the earth’s ability to renew itself and sustain us for another year. In agrarian societies — that used to be all societies — foods were the most potent of all new year’s symbols.
No matter what the date, most cultures older than ours plan the party around food and not blue martinis.
In Norse tradition the month-long Yule celebration ended around the new year with a blow-out feast of Viking proportions.
Chinese New Year is marked with a large multi-course meal.
In Scotland Hogmanay is celebrated for at least two or three, even four days (Again, I do not lie. It’s the Norse influence.) and guests are expected to bring whiskey or fruitcake to every person they visit.
Non-food related symbols come to us from the ancients.
Ancient Egyptian and Greek societies paraded a baby around to symbolize the new year, at the end of winter when the crops sprouted, not the beginning when we do it.
Baby New remains a popular symbol and turns up at celebrations even today. TV and print newsrooms still fall all over themselves to find the first baby of the new year and your local chamber of commerce probably showers the lucky infant with gifts.
Father Time, who symbolizes the passage of time and the death of the old year, is a much more complex creature. His most ancient manifestations come from India. Yama the god of death and justice is described in the Vedas and the Upanishads, making him at least 3,500 years old and probably much older. Yama maintains order in the afterworld and assigns people their reincarnations, sometimes as a richer and more powerful person, other times a cockroach.
As the ruler of death and new beginnings, Yama has profoundly influenced by later precursors of Father Time such as Rome’s Pluto, Chronos, the Greek god of time, and the Grim Reaper of English and northern European tradition.
He is a kindly looking old fellow these days, sometimes depicted holding Baby New Year, but few mothers in the ancient world would have willingly handed their infant to such a being.
At the stroke of Midnight, as the old year passes into the new, only one tradition is left: the kiss. Thank the Romans. Again. They loved kissing and incorporated it into their Solstice and Saturnalia celebrations. Thus kissing as a New Year’s Eve tradition persists today in most of their empire and, as a result, it has spread throughout the new world. The kiss is meant to set the tone for the new year, so be careful who you are standing near when the clock strikes 12. Pick a loved one. Awkward is not the tone you want to set for a whole year.
