By Michele D. Baker
They say January 1 is New Year’s Day, but recently I read several articles that made me rethink this whole “calendar” thing.
According to Brittanica.com, in the 7th century BCE, Roman emperor Numa Pompilius decided to change the date of the new year to January 1 to honor Janus, the Roman god of new beginnings. (Some sources say he also created the month of January.)
Before that, people had celebrated a “new year” in mid-December or even mid-March: you start the year when things come back to life and start blooming.
Related: It’s January, and I Miss Cookbooks
If March is the first month of the year, then (follow along) April is the second month, May is third, and so on. This makes the most sense when you get to the later months. “September” – from “sept” or “seven” – is then the actual seventh month. “October” – from “octo” or “eight” – is the eighth month and “December” – meaning ten – is the tenth month. January and February, traditionally some of the coldest months, round out the year with winter (the “end”) in eleventh and twelfth.
Why is “OCTO-ber” the 10th Month Instead of the 8th?
October is the 10th month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. With 31 days, it is the eighth month in the old calendar of Romulus c. 750 BC, October retained its name (from Latin and Greek ôctō meaning “eight”) after January and February were inserted into the calendar that had originally been created by the Romans.
In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar changed the calendar again. He left New Year’s Day on January 1 but his new calendar neglected to account for leap years. After several centuries, the cumulative effect was that several holidays were no longer in their correct “seasons,” and there was a problem in determining the date for Easter. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII updated it with the Gregorian calendar, attempting to fix the problem.
Many Catholic countries immediately adopted the newly-revised Gregorian calendar, but it took some time for the Protestant countries to follow (and many non-Christian countries kept their old calendars). Of most interest to me is the fact that Great Britain and its American colonies did not begin following the Gregorian calendar until 1752… 170 years later (before then they celebrated New Year’s Day on March 25). Russia did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918.
Now, in 2026 (by the Gregorian calendar, anyway), people the world over use all kinds of calendars: the Julian calendar, Gregorian calendar, Hebrew calendar, or even a lunar calendar or the Mayan calendar. Whichever day you celebrate as the beginning of the next turn about the sun, Happy New Year! I wish you fair skies, good health and a peaceful new year.
