Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Does the Year Start on January 1?

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks. While documenting our trips around the sun makes perfect sense, why do we use this day, January 1, as the starting point for our calendar years? Why not some other date? Learn more about how January 1st became the start of the new year on this Episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Year's Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but it's also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks. While documenting our trip around the sun makes perfect sense, why do we use this day, January 1st, as the starting point for our calendar years? Why not some other day? Learn more about how January 1st became the start of the new year on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok.

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With Skillshare Premium, you can have unlimited access to everything for as low as 825 per month. Go to everything-dash everywhere.com slash Skillshare to get a free two-week trial of Skillshare Premium membership or just click on the link. in the show notes. Every year the Earth orbits around the sun, and we celebrate each revolution on New Year's Day. But what's so special about this particular spot in our orbit? Why do we use January 1st as the start of our year as opposed to some other day? As we go back in history, most human civilizations did not use a solar calendar. They used lunar calendars. In fact, if you look at the traditional calendars for countries such as China and Vietnam, or for religions such as Judaism and Islam, they have lunar calendars and their New Year's

Year's Day changes its date every year. Our current calendar can be traced back to ancient Rome. The very early Romans, way back at the founding of the city, used to have 10 months, and that 10-month system is still reflected in many of the names of our months today. Their first month was Martius, named after the god Mars, which we call March. After March came the months of Aprilis, Mayus, and Junius. The months after this were just named after their number. Quintillus, sextilius, September, October,

November and December. So, yeah, December our 12th month really means the 10th month in Latin, likewise with November, October, and September. However, 10 months didn't really fit nicely into a year. They had two full months worth of leftover dates that didn't really fit into any month. To rectify this around the year 700 BC, the Roman king Numa added two more months to the calendar. Iannuarius, named after the Roman god Janus, and Februaryus, which was was now the last and shortest month of the year. For Romans, the beginning of each month was called the callens, so the start of the year was the calends of March, or March 1st. Then at some point, and no one is quite sure when, the year began being counted on the calends of Iannuarius. January

went from being the 11th month to being the first month. This might have had something to do with the start of terms for consuls. Romans named their years after the two consuls in power instead of numbering them. So, for example, the year 59 BC, Julius Caesar was consul with Calprenius Biblius. It was known as the year of Caesar and Biblius. However, Bibilus was weak, so there was a running joke that it was the year of Julius and Caesar. It might have also had something to do with the fact that January 1st was the Callens closest to the winter solstice. Caesar is actually really important to this story. While the names of the months were very similar to the months we have today. The calendar itself was still a mess. Caesar instituted changes to fix this problem,

and he adopted the suggestions of a Greek astronomer named Cisogynes of Alexandria. Cisogynes suggested going to a tropical year, more on that in a bit, and created the 365-day year with a leap year every fourth year. So that's pretty much the story, right? The Romans set January as the first day of the year, Julius Caesar sets the Julian calendar, and we get to where we are today. Nope. Because in the Middle Ages, the system fell apart completely. At the 567 Council of Tours, and there were a whole bunch of different councils of tours, so you have to specify, the church declared that January 1st was not to be celebrated as the New Year as it was a pagan tradition. What replaced January 1st? Well, nothing. There were a whole bunch of different days

celebrated all over Europe for centuries. Some places used Christmas, which was the winter solstice on the Julian calendar. Some use the floating date of Easter. Some went back to the old Roman March 1st. And some, if you remember back to the episode on why Christmas is on December 25th, use the important date of March 25th as the start of the new year. Eventually, for a whole host of reasons, Pope Gregory the 13th fixed the problems with the Julian calendar and used the opportunity to standardize the new year back to being January 1st.

For good measure, they also made January 1st a holy day. which it still is today. Originally, January 1st was the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, but now it's just called the solemnity of Mary. Of course, not everyone was on board with the new calendar. Catholic countries were quick to adopt it, but Protestant and Orthodox countries were not. In particular, one country was very late to adopt January 1st

as the beginning of the new year. That country was England. England celebrated their new year on March 25th. In fact, their colony, in the Americas did this as well up until 1752. In 1750, England passed what was known as the Calendar New Style Act, also known as Chesterfields Act, which is when they adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The very first thing mentioned in the act was the problem with using March 25th as the

New Year, when almost everyone else in Europe used January 1st, including Scotland. So when England finally adopted January 1st as the start of the new year, so did the American colonies for the first time. Today, most countries now use the Gregorian calendar, even if it's only for business purposes to stay in stink with the rest of the world. New Year's celebrations such as Tet in Vietnam, Chinese New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, are still traditional festivities held on different days all over the world. The fact remains that there's nothing astronomically significant about January 1st, even though it's celebrating an astronomical event, aka a revolution around the sun. So if we were to start a new calendar from scratch, what day would we pick?

Before, I mentioned that Sasaginese of Alexandria suggested we celebrate a tropical year, and I picked that word carefully as opposed to a solar year, because there are two types of solar years, and they're very similar. A tropical year is the time from one season to the next, based on when the solstices occur. The current years, based on the Gregorian calendar, are tropical years. However, there's also a thing known as a sidereal year, which is when we measure the position of Earth based on the location of stars. The difference between a sidereal year and a tropical year is very small. A sidereal year is only 20 minutes longer.

This can add up, however. The difference between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar is only 11 minutes per year, and that caused a lot of problems over the centuries. This has to do with the procession of the orbit that is constantly changing. There are two logical places to define a new year based on Astronomic principles. The first would be one of the solstices. This is something that humans have measured for thousands of years and have recognized its importance. The winter solstice also isn't too far away from January 1st. The solstice really has more to do with the tilt of the Earth, however, and not the orbit of the Earth.

There is something significant about the orbit of the Earth that is a point we could use, and oddly enough, it's really close to January 1st, even though the ancients had no clue. The orbit of the Earth around the sun is close to circular, but it isn't perfectly circular. It's a slight ellipse. Hence, there is a point where the Earth is closest to the sun, and it's called the Perihelian.

Parahelian in the year 2021 takes place on January 2nd. The date of Parahelian drifts over time. In the year 1246, Perihelian actually took place on the same date as the Salsis. In the year 6,430, it will take place on the spring equinox. So January 1st is the start of our year, which marks an astronomical event, even though the date itself has no astronomical significance. It was set by the Romans, but then abandoned by the church, only to be later adopted once again by the church.

So, as the Romans did, celebrate the Callens of January, which honors Janus the Roman god with two faces, one which looks into the past at the old year, and one which looks into the future at the new. Happy New Year. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAlla. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Today's five-star review comes from listener TB Gal over at Apple Podcasts. They write, perfect. I listen to podcasts all the time, and this one, without a doubt, is my absolute favorite,

hoping he never runs out of snippets. Well, thank you very much, TB Gal, and I assure you I'm not worried about running out of episode ideas. Over the holiday break I brainstormed more ideas and I now have more ideas on my list than I have shows that I've already done so far. If you'd like to see the list and even contribute to it, you can do so by becoming a patron over at patreon.com.