Mar 20, 2025 4 min read

The Real New Year

Different cultures celebrate the new year on very different dates but some dates don't make much sense.

Let us celebrate endings and beginnings. Photo by Kanenori from Pixabay

What day does the new year start? You might think it's January 1st but it's actually today—March 20th!

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Humans have always noticed and celebrated the repeating cycle of seasons, but deciding when one cycle ends and another begins is not so easy. We could simply say that the cycle is an endless loop with no ending or beginning, but at the same time there's a lot of joy in picking a moment to celebrate renewal and new beginnings after a period of darkness and death.

It's surprising how many ways humans have chosen to track the cycles of time. For instance, Mesolithic peoples of ancient Britain based their calendar on the phases of the moon, while ancient Egyptians used the cycles of the sun, and to this day Chinese people combine them into a lunisolar calendar.

lunisolar calendar — A creative merging of the Chinese lunisolar and Gregorian calendars by Dave Bergman

Old traditions were largely centered around natural cycles, with a particular focus on the seasons of planting or harvest. The Ethiopian new year Enkutatash is celebrated on September 11, marking the end of the rainy season and symbolizing renewal and fertility. The ancient Egyptian new year Wepet Renpet coincided with the flooding of the Nile River, with the exact date changing each year and sometimes being celebrated multiple times a year.

Wepet Renpet — Marking the changing seasons. Image from the British Library

Likewise, the Roman calendar we use today originally honored a 10-month cycle that began with the planting season in March. The first four months were named after gods (March is named for the god Mars) and the last six months were consecutively numbered in Latin (September is the seventh month).

Roman harvest — Depiction of Roman agriculture. Image in public domain

However, this 10-month calendar didn't line up with lunar cycles and was far from perfect, so in the 7th century B.C. the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, added January and February, with February being the end of the year.

3rd century mosaic of February — Third century tile mosaic commemorating February. Photo by Ad Meskens

In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar mandated further changes that brought the calendar into alignment with solar cycles. And while he was at it, he declared that the new year would henceforth begin on January 1, which was the day that Rome's two executive consuls took office each year. In essence, the decision to celebrate the New Year on January 1 was an arbitrary political choice that broke the link between our calendar and the natural world.

Early Roman calendar in the Museo del Teatro Roman.

Even to this day, many people wonder why we celebrate renewal and new beginnings in the middle of winter! After all, January is named after Janus, the two-faced god who stands at the threshold with one face looking back at the past and one face looking forward into the future, yet January 1st isn't a threshold date in either the natural or celestial world.

Roman statue of Janus in the Vatican Museum

Instead, many cultures, both old and new, have long celebrated March 20th as the day when the old year gives birth to the new year. This is spring equinox, the threshold moment when the sun crossed the equator and begins its journey north, bringing sunshine, rebirth, and renewal to the dark days of winter (in the Northern Hemisphere).

spring equinox — Spring equinox is the moment that the sun crosses the equator on its journey north each spring. Image from timeanddate.com

In some parts of the world it makes perfect sense to begin the new year at the end of the rainy season or when the floods arrive, but on a larger, celestial scale, and for the rest of us, spring equinox is both the beginning of spring and the beginning of the new year.