Most people around December 31st - January 1st are likely to be wishing someone else a Happy New Year, but many while doing so will still be waiting for their own specific New Year to come around.

Working in entertainment for much of our lives, Ursula and I enjoyed the best of the cultural diversity that exists in the UK and were fortunate enough to share many New Years’ each year with those from other countries and faiths. But that was before the myth of multiculturalism was promoted and political correctness claimed that celebrating our own traditions might cause offense to others.

There are so many New Years’ to celebrate, including the Chinese New Year, the start the Roman year, Jewish New Year, Indian New Year, Hindu New Year, Sikh New Year, Muslim New Year and more that could all be enjoyed. Islam follows a lunar calendar with a year of 354 days over 12 months which, in time, pushes the New Year around the seasons; which isn’t a bad idea. Many of the traditions that are celebrated around the world during these varying ‘years’ possess a striking similarity to one another and many relate to millennia prior to the two we only recently celebrated.

Our own calendar was imported from Europe - after 3000 years of being tampered with.
At the outset, the Romans were trying to impose a convenient uniformity on nature, that doesn't - naturally - exist. Over here, our ancestors were quite happy to live their years in accord with the sun and moon; until the church decided that their pagan ways should give way to saint's days.

Romulus founded Rome and the Romans decided that year 1 of their 304 day, ten month calendar should coincide with the building of the city.

Where do our ancestors fit into all this ?

For our ancestors, the Romans’ year 1 - was 753BC but, of course, they didn't know that we would later consider they had been living BC. They were happy enough celebrating the seasons, the longest day, shortest night, a ritual here a rite there, the moon turning up as a great white globe regularly, and so on.

That all sounds very simple, so you reckon they had it all pretty well sorted out.

Not by a long way, Europe was not at all satisfied with this set-up.

Sorted out well enough to celebrate the solstice and the equinox with amazing accuracy but, in Rome, along came Numa Pompilius, 39AUC, ab urbe condita the year since the founding of the city of Rome (715BC) who decided that he could improve the Roman calendar by adding two extra months to make year of 354 days.

He put January at the beginning of the year, and February at the end, after December and there they stayed until 452BC (302AUC), about 220 years after his death, when it was then decided that February should be relocated to follow January.

So we can thank Numa Pompilius for providing us with our calendar and our new year.

No, he'd got it wrong.

His year was ten days shorter than the solar cycle, so every other year he added extra days between 23rd and 24th February, which was still the last month of the year at the time. He ended up with a complicated calendar with 1465 days over a four year period; then he died.
The ancient priesthood desired that the vernal equinox should occur each year on or about March 25th, the first day of the Roman civil year, and by the time Julius Caesar ruled Rome (102-44BC) Sosigenes, an eminent Greek astronomer and mathematician was called in to correct accumulated errors.

To put things right………. he came up with a year of 445 days.

It was Julius Caesar, who introduced the 365-366 day calendar, but the priests responsible for maintaining it got the leap years wrong and the vernal equinox ended up on March 21st instead of the 25th, according to the inaccurate calendar.

Eventually, but not until 1582, Pope Gregory reformed the calendar, and it was all change yet again.

He directed that October 4th should be followed by October 15th, failing to correct the error completely. However, the Pope was not in favour in England or Scotland at the time so his 'Gregorian' calendar was ignored here until 1752 when it was adopted and eleven days were disposed of overnight, March 25th ceased to be New Year and Christmas dropped back to December 25th.

Seven years later, in 1759, Robert Burns was born, and in 1788, the first 750 convicts arrived in Australia. Each event provided something tangible, something traditional to celebrate but while Burns Night is likely to continue will Australian's soon celebrate an independence day instead?
That Islamic lunar calendar that pushes the New Year around the seasons isn’t that far removed from what happened in many countries when calendar changes were introduced and we still haven’t achieved a universal calendar that is acceptably accurate to all people. Today we celebrate many festivals and festivities that have their origins in pagan, pre-Christian, pre-Jewish society but rarely do we celebrate them in accord with our ancestors; the calendar changes have ensured that.

For those that have enjoyed Christmas and New Year celebrations that commenced on the eve of Christmas, December 24th, can revert back to the pre 1752 calendar that served our ancestors well and truly mark their memory by celebrating all over again, beginning on January 5th, their Old Christmas Eve, which has become our Twelfth Night.

Happy New Year/s.
© Roy & Ursula Radford