From Over the Hill: So, New Year? by Peter Bloch-Hansen
Francisco), Viet Nam, Singapore, India, Nepal, Tibet, Iran, Pakistan, Morocco, Israel, Mongolia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and many more. Wait, what? You say: everybody uses the January 1 calendar! Yes, because it’s practical for banking, business, international trade and scientific research papers (and birthdays). But the calendar is cultural as well as practical. So, is the date just arbitrary? Well, it is: blame Numa Pompilius. But, how could it not be? His calendar was tied to the moon cycles, which made for problems it took till Pope Gregory to sort out. We could use the sun cycle, say, the Spring Equinox, which has a certain logic as a place to begin, but not in the southern hemisphere, where it’s then Autumn. What a conundrum! Could the UN pick a date that would satisfy everyone? Let’s keep politicians out of it. Besides, everyone is pretty happy with the one we use. It’s not like changing a provincial license plate; imagine the confusion, the high rate of suicide among baffled and frustrated historians and accountants. So, the date must be arbitrary. Also, as the above edited list shows, there is no global ‘Common Era’ in the cultures that people actually live in and celebrate, which is why I used BC and AD, which are factual and not a hypocritical slurring of the facts to keep people from having their feelings hurt. Or maybe it’s just that I’m old? You decide.
So, why do we mark the beginning of our calendar year as January 1? Yup: it’s the Romans (busy people, really). The word calendar descends from their word calends, which was the first day
of the month – like the ides, which correlates to the fifteenth day – alas, poor Caesar; accounts and debts were settled on the calends, so a calendar was a book for recording those debts. The financial significance of this still applies: see below. As near as historians can tell, in the 8th century BC, the Etruscan king, Numa Pompilius, then ruling Rome, replaced March with January as the first month, in honour of Janus, their god of beginnings and endings, though January 1 only became official in Rome in 153 BC. (After Rome’s fall, some conquered areas reverted to older dates in March or adopted December 25. March 25th applied in Britain and American colonies till 1758.) In 45/46 BC, Julius Caesar gave Rome the January 1 Julian calendar, which didn’t account for leap year. So, in 1582 AD, Pope Gregory XII set a January 1 new calendar which did. It’s still pretty much the one used now. But not everywhere: traditional New Year’s are celebrated in many countries, such as China (and famously, in San
Page 12 Boomers and Beyond – Elgin • Jan-Feb 2026
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