Happy New Year (Christian calendar)

[Americano]

To.... all.

[partofme]

Happy New Years!!!

Here is to hoping we get some good news. :)

[Michael]

A Happy New Year to one and all. :party:

And I'm going to have to flash my pedantic badge here! :D We don't actually use a "Christian" calendar. The calendar we use that marks January 1st as New Year's Day is officially called the 'Gregorian' calendar which is a 16th century modification of the old 'Julian' calendar which the Romans used.

And, by-the-way, January 1st as 'new years day' is an arbitrary perversion of the original calendar that holds new years in March (spring equinox). This tradition is preserved in the sequence of the signs in astrology (which always begins with Ares in March).

Likewise, one can see the original sequence of the months preserved in the names of September (meaning 7th month), October (8th month), November (9th month) and December (10th month). This sequence points to March as the 1st month, not January.

The reason for this 'weirdness' is that in the late Roman Republican era, the highest commanding officer of the Roman Army was the Consul, and office elected for a one-year term, that was officially sworn in on New Years Day according to Roman civil and religious tradition. The problem was that as the Roman Republic grew larger (acquired conquered provinces), by the time one swears in the new Consul in Rome in March, it is late summer by the time the Consul (general) could get to the battlefield on the border (in modern Iran for example). Thus, they moved 'new years day' from March to February 1st to enable the Consul a bit of a headstart on any necessary travel time needed since 'early summer' was generally the preferred 'battleseason' on most frontiers. The Romans then moved it a second time, moving 'new years day' from February 1st to January 1st (for exactly the same reason) - where it still sits to this day - an oddly preserve anachronism.

I've always felt since I was a kid that 'new years' in the middle of winter made no sense at all. And it still doesn't make sense. It just seems weird.

[Greendruid]

Perhaps he was referring to the year count rather than the calendar itself? That was the way I originally read it. Although your recounting of the development of the modern Gregorian was quite interesting, the year of 2009 is nonetheless directly attributable to the mediaeval miscalculations of the supposed birth of Jesus of Nazareth. This is not obviated, in my opinion, with the replacement of the AD/BC system with the CE/BCE system. The "Common Era" to which this refers is still the common Christian era.

As a pagan, I celebrate the beginning of the new year around November 7th or Samhain. This is traditionally the end of the harvest and actually aligns quite nicely with North American harvested crops. However, I have no number of this year. So happy 2009, however you may look at it!:party: