So What's New About New Year's Day?

Yes, what’s so new about New Year’s Day? It just happens to be number 2013 on the particular calendar our culture follows. This year used to be designated of A.D., the abbreviation for Anno Domini, following the Christian calendar authorized in 1582 by Pope Gregory XII for use in all Roman Catholic countries of Europe.

The British retained their traditional Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar, for another 170 years until 1752. That also included the British colonies in North America and the West Indies.

Just to confuse the matter further, a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus, (c. 470-c. 544) was the person who invented the use of the term Anno Domini (A.D./AD) to refine the date of Easter, not Christmas, the celebration of the supposed birth date of Jesus Christ.

The Chinese have another calendar as do some religious communities such as the Jews. The Chinese have three different ways of numbering their years. Thus, 2013 may be one of the following: 4650, 4710 or 4711. The Chinese New Year won’t begin until February 10, 2013, whichever year it happens to be. The Hebrew New Year, called Rosh Hashana, will not be celebrated until September 5-6, 2013. This will be the year 5773 in their calendar.

To get away from the religious connotations (to say nothing of the prejudices) of numbering years, this year is now commonly designated 2013 CE. The initial CE stand for Common Era (a.k.a Current Era or Christian Era). But the date still retains its religious roots. The date of succeeding years was intended to be counted from the year 1, the year Jesus Christ was born. Christian religious scholars now know that this was a historical error made in the calculation of Jesus birth date. The actual date is unknown, though much energy has been spent trying to ascertain when it occurred.

All calendars, religious or secular, serve the purpose of determining in a crude mathematical way how we account for the passage of time. It is really the revolution of the planet Earth on its axis and its circling of our star, the sun, that accounts for the numbering of days. Since the earliest humans first became conscious that this was happening and interpreted it as the rising and setting of the sun, special meaning has been this natural phenomenon. Religious centres and celebrations were created to mark the changing of the seasons caused by the earth’s revolutions.

Thus calendars became necessary to mark of passing time. Either the summer and winter solstis are really the only natural new years days.