If you have ever wondered why the New Year starts in the freezing cold of January, you can thank Caesar. That’s right, Julius Caesar, leader of the Roman Empire. Before Caesar took power the length of a year was somewhat subjective. Politicians in Rome might add days, or subtract days to increase terms in the Senate; and it was based around the phases of the moon, but kept falling out of line with the seasons. Enter Caesar, who sought to set the calendar into a more predictable cycle, except he did so starting most of the way through the year, 45 B.C.E. As such, the Julian calendar began on January 1st instead of in March as was tradition.
By the time of the Middle Ages, the holiday had fallen into obscurity. Everyone knew the year started on January 1st, but the celebration of it went unobserved. The reason was because January 1st kept moving. Caesar did not calculate that a year is about 365.24 days long; instead he calculated at 365.25. After about a thousand years of adding a few minutes every year the calendar ended up having 376 days and kept adding. So in 1582 the Gregorian calendar came along and instituted the idea of the leap year to balance things back out. Since then, the first has been consistent, and thus people began to celebrate the New Year with regularity.
Happy New Year for all of us at the SCHS!
Written by Dave Nichols, Curator of Collections