Happy New Year.
I watched the ball drop in Times Square from the warmth of my home in Dallas. It was ten degrees at midnight in New York City, colder than any New Year’s Eve except in 1917, when it was one degree. Mariah Carey performed on ABC’s broadcast, while Maria Menounos co-hosted Fox’s show and got married on live TV just after midnight.
You could spend New Year’s Day reading about ways to be happier, healthier, and wealthier in 2018. Or you could read about predictions in science, business, and culture. You could brave the cold to go outside and gaze at tonight’s Supermoon. If you’re like me, you’ll be watching college football much of the day.
What you’ll probably not do on this New Year’s Day is wonder why we have a New Year’s Day.
Why does January 1 begin the “new year”? (It doesn’t in many cultures around the world.) Why is there such a thing as a “new year”? And why does the concept of a new year matter to us beyond today?
Where did “New Year’s Day” begin?
If you lived without a calendar, nothing about today would tell you that it is any different from yesterday or tomorrow. You would know that the seasons have changed, of course. It’s definitely winter in Dallas (we will not get above freezing until Wednesday), while it’s definitely summer in Australia (the high in Sydney today is an enviable 80 degrees).
Over time, you would notice that there are four repeating seasons. You would notice cyclical changes with the moon and the stars. But you would probably not seek to identify one day as beginning the process all over again.
Where, then, did we get the idea for a “New Year’s Day”?
According to History.com, the earliest recorded festivals honoring a new year date back four millennia to the Babylonians. For them, the first new moon following the vernal equinox (late March on our calendar) began the new year. Egyptians began their new year with the annual flooding of the Nile, which coincided…
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