Cultures around the globe have been commemorating
the beginning of each new year for at least four millennia. Nowadays, most New
Year’s festivities starts on December 31 (New Year’s Eve), the last day of the Gregorian
calendar, and last into the early hours of January 1 (New Year’s Day). Traditionally,
celebrations include, eating special New Year’s foods with the whole family, attending
parties, making resolutions for the new year and watching colorful and bursting
fireworks.
Ancient New Year’s
Festivities
The most primitive documented celebration in
honor of a new year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon.
For the Babylonians, the first new moon following the vernal equinox-the day in
late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness -prefigured the beginning
of a new year. They celebrated the event with a huge religious festival called
Akitu (taken from the Sumerian word for barley, which was cut in the spring)
that encompassed a various ritual on each of its 11 days. Aside from the new
year, Atiku commemorated the mythical victory of the Babylonian sky god Marduk
over the evil sea goddess Tiamat and served a significant political purpose: It
was for this period that a new king was crowned or that the current ruler’s
divine mandate was emblematically recommenced.
The past to mull over
When he introduced his new Julian calendar, Julius
Caesar had to add 90 extra days to the year 46 B.C. so as to readjust the Roman
calendar with the sun. All over the ancient times, cultures around the world
created progressively classy calendars normally attaching the first day of the
year to an agricultural or astronomical event. In Egypt, for example, the year started
with the annual flooding of the Nile, which concurred with the rising of the
star Sirius.
January 1st turns
to be New Year Day
The ancient Roman calendar comprised of 10 months
and 304 days, with each new year starting at the vernal equinox; it is
disclosed that it was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth
century B.C. Subsequently, Numa Pompilius, is credited with adding the months
of Januarius and Februarius. Over the centuries, the calendar disagreed with
the sun, and in 46 B.C. the emperor Julius Caesar resolved the issue by
consulting with the most famous astronomers and mathematicians of his era. He
established the Julian calendar, which is closely similar to the more modern
Gregorian calendar that majority of countries globally use nowdays.
To restructure, Caesar established January 1 as
the first day of the year, partly to pay tribute to Janus, the Roman god of
beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward
into the future. Romans celebrated the occasion by offering sacrifices to
Janus, exchanging gifts with one another, adorning their homes with laurel
branches and attending wild parties. In medieval Europe, Christian leaders temporarily
replaced January 1 as the first of the year with days carrying more religious
significance, such as December 25 (as commemoration of Jesus’ birth) and March
25 (the Feast of the Annunciation); Pope Gregory XIII re-established January 1
as New Year’s Day in 1582.
Traditions of New Year
In many parts of the world, commemoration of New
Year start on the evening of December 31- New Year’s Eve - and lasts into the early
hours of January 1. As expectant faith, celebrators often enjoy meals and snacks
to receive more blessings as the new year emerges. In Spain and several other
Spanish-speaking countries, people bolt down a dozen grapes which signifies
hopes for the following year-right before midnight. In some countries,
traditional New Year’s dishes feature legumes, which are believed to bear a
resemblance of coins and herald future triumph, such as lentils in Italy and
black-eyed peas in the southern United States. As pigs signify progress and
prosperity in some cultures, pork appears on the New Year’s Eve table in the
Philippines, Cuba, Austria, Hungary, Portugal and other countries. Ring-shaped
cakes and pastries, a symbol that the year has come full circle, add to the
feast in the Netherlands, Mexico, Greece and elsewhere. In Sweden and Norway,
rice pudding with an almond hidden inside is served on New Year’s Eve believing
that whoever finds the nut can expect one year of good fortune.
In the United States, the most iconic New Year’s
tradition is the dropping of a giant ball in New York City’s Times Square at
the stroke of midnight, which I experienced when we had the same commemoration with
different version of ball at Vincentian Hills Seminary when I was a seminarian
back then. Eventually, the ball itself has expanded from a 700-pound
iron-and-wood orb to a brightly patterned sphere 12 feet in diameter and
weighing in at nearly 12,000 pounds. [1]
While there was no necessary starting-point in
the circle of the year, it could be found among different countries, and among
the same at different epochs of their history, a huge variety of dates with
which the new year started.
The beginning of spring was a natural start, and
in the Bible itself there is a close relationship between the year’s start and
the seasons.
The ancient Roman year started in March, but
Julius Caesar, in correcting the calendar (46 B.C.), created January the first
month. Though this custom has been commonly acclimatized among Christian cultures,
the names, September, October, November, and December (i.e., the seventh, eight,
ninth, and tenth), remind of the past,
when March began the year.
Christian writers and councils denounced the
heathen orgies and excesses linked with the festival of the Saturnalia, which
were commemorated at the start of the year: Tertullian accused Christians who observed
the customary presents — called strenae from the goddess Strenia, who presided over
New Year's Day - as mere tokens of friendly intercourse , and towards the end
of the sixth century the Council of Auxerre prohibited Christians strenas
diabolicas observare.
The Second Council of Tours held in 567 prescribes
prayers and a Mass of expiation for New Year's Day, adding that this is a
practice long in use. Dances were prohibited, and pagan crimes were to be atoned
by Christian fasts.
From Christian Framework
The term “year” is etymologically the same as hour (Skeat), and denotes a going, movement etc. In Semitic, the word for "year" denotes repetition, of the course of the sun (Gesenius).
When Christmas was established on December 25, New
Year's Day was sanctified by commemorating on it the Circumcision, for which
feast the Gelasian Sacramentary provided a Mass. Christians did not wish to
make the feast very solemn, for fear that they might seem to allow in any way
the pagan luxury of the opening year.
Among the Jews the first day of the seventh
month, Tishri (end of September), started the civil or economic year with the
sound of trumpets (Leviticus 23:24; Numbers 29:1). In the Bible the day is not
mentioned as New Year's Day, but the Jews so considered, so named it, and so regard
it as such now.
The sacred year started with Nisan (early in
April), a later name for the Biblical abhibh, i.e. "month of new corn",
and was unforgettable because in this month the Lord your God brought you out
of Egypt by night (Deuteronomy 16:1). Barley
ripens in Palestine in the early part of April; hence the sacred year started
with the harvest, the civil year with the sowing of the harvests.
Taken from Biblical account, Josephus and many
modern scholars hold that the twofold starting of the year was pre-exilic, or
even Mosaic . Given that the Jewish months were measured by the moon, while the
ripening barley of Nisan depended upon the sun, the Jews resorted to
intercalation to bring sun and moon dates into sync, and to keep the months in
the seasons to which they fitted.
Christian nations did not harmonize in the date
of New Year's Day, not to oppose to January 1 as the start of the year, but
rather to the pagan luxuries attached to it.
Apparently, the natural start of the year, the
springtime, together with the Jewish beginning of the sacred year, Nisan,
suggested the decency of placing the beginning in that delightful season. Likewise,
the Dionysian method (derived from the Abbot Dionysius, sixth century) of
dating events from the coming of our Lord Jesus turned to be a significant
factor in New Year calculations. The Annunciation, with which Dionysius started
the Christian period, was established on 25 March, and turned out to be the New
Year's Day for England, in ancient times and from the 13th century to January 1,
1752, when the present custom was introduced there. Some countries (e.g.,
Germany) started with Christmas, thus being practically in sync with the
ancient Germans, who developed the winter solstice their starting-point.
Not withstanding the flexible charisma of Easter,
France and the Low Countries took it as the first day of the year, while
Russia, up to the 18th century, made September the first month. The western
countries, nonetheless, since the 16th, or, at the latest, the 18th century,
have accepted and kept the 1st of January.
In Christian liturgy, the Church does not refer to
the 1st of the year, any more than she does to the fact that the 1st Sunday of
Advent is the 1st day of the ecclesiastical year.
In the U.S., the great feast of the Epiphany has stopped
to be a holyday of obligation, but New Year remain in effect. Considering that
the mysteries of the Epiphany are commemorated on Christmas - the Orientals consider the celebrations one and
the same in import - it was believed advisable to keep by preference, under the
title Circumcision of Our Lord Jesus Christ, New Year's Day as one of the six
feast of obligation. The Fathers of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore appealed
Rome to this effect, and thus granted.[2]
The
challenge to muse on:
Romans 12:2 Do
not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your
mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing
and perfect.
Any type of celebration whether it falls to a superstitious
or customs, traditional or non-traditional that emerge out of a culture’s
choice, every celebration must not compromise the values that Jesus articulates
impartially to both the Christians and non-Christians, to both theists and
atheists. The challenge for every New Year is to make a constant amendments on
everyone’s lifestyle throughout the entire year that is attuned to the will of
the Father, but not to the false promises of the world's allurement attached to the
commemoration, but to the love, harmony, contentment that love which our Lord Jesus
could offer, which everybody could share to each one. Triumph and defeats may happen in between
while pursuing a life that’s enveloped by love brought by different distractive
temptations but hopeful transformation always follows to a heart, mind and soul
that endures the challenge of holiness to love, not only the lovable but also
the incapable to love (socially, emotionally, spiritually, tangibly) in return.
Taken from your personal journey in this life, in
what areas of your actions did you fall short, which you need to give more
attention, prayers and labor in the subsequent months, to be more focused
than distracted? Why and how?
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