Happy New Year!!! 

 

???

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Again???

 

What’s going on … ?

The celebration of the new year on January 1st is a relatively new phenomenon … dating back to 46BC Over the centuries, different have established their own calendars and each has its own New Year associated with it.  The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians, for example, began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice.

So far this year, here in Kyrgyzstan we’ve already commemorated:

• January 1st – traditional New Year – instituted by Julius Caesar in 46BC … In medieval Europe, the celebrations accompanying the New Year festivities were considered pagan and in 567, the Council of Tours decreed that January 1st should no longer be celebrated as the start of a new year and in various places  the new year was celebrated on Dec. 25, the birth of Jesus; March 1; March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation; and Easter.  It was with the adoption of the the Gregorian calendar in 1582 that January 1st was restored as New Year … but although most of Catholic Europe adopted the new calendar fairly early on, in Protestant countries the tradition of celebrating New Year in March persisted … it was only in 1752 that the British Empire adopted the new calendar.
• January 13th – Stariy Noviy God – Old New Year – falling on January 1st according to the old Julian Calendar …
• February 10th – Chinese New Year, according to the Chinese lunar calendar
• March 21st – Norus – sometimes, (mistakenly), called Muslim New Year … this year the Islamic New Year, (1st Muharram), falls on 4/5 November, 2013, so it is still to come … Norus falls on the occasion of the Spring Solstice marks the Iranian New Year and could have been the origin of “New Year” celebrations, dating back to Mesopotamia sometime around 2000BC.

But that’s not all.  As well as the Islamic New year, we still have Hindi New Year and Jewish New Year to come.

Lady Day, March 25th, is the traditional name for the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, when the Archangel Gabriel visited Mary and told her that she was with child and the term “Lady” is a reference to the Virgin Mary.

It’s the first of the four “quarter days” and in England it marked the New Year until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752.  One of the interesting vestiges of this is that, in Britain, is the fact that the tax year is deemed to start on 6th April … a result of the adjustment that had to be made as part of the conversion from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars … when some days were “lost”.  In order that a complete year, (365 days), occurred during the transition, the start of the “tax year” was moved from 25th March to 6th April.

As a ex-pat from England … it seems reasonable that I should commemorate the traditional start of the English New Year … with a cake, as is traditional in our office … mind you, I am expecting a lot of confused looks from everyone when I bring it in – but most people know I am a bit eccentric, so they’ll probably make allowances for me.

From time to time I have also wondered if this wouldn’t have been a more appropriate date on which to commemorate “Mothers Day” or even “International Women’s Day” … but I suppose the association with a Christian feast day probably rules that out … and, anyway, the current system means that the ladies get several “bites at the cherry”.

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Tags: Calendar, Expat