Well another year has drawn to a close as we say hello to 2026, Bringing about a fresh clean slate for everyone whether it be a resolution for the year or just resuming what you had from last year and continuing it into this year. While people see these new years celebrations and think that this is not an old thing, it has history tracing back hundreds, and even thousands of years ago. So, let’s not waste any time and get right to it.
The earliest ancestor of the modern-day New Years celebration traces all the way back to the Babylonians with their celebrations of the spring equinox known as Akitu which were around four thousand years ago. This particular celebration took place during the first new moon of spring and would last for 11 days honoring the chief god and supreme deity of its mythology known as Marduk symbolizing new kingship. It included rituals like the "humiliation" of the king to renew his divine mandate.
Meanwhile the Egyptians would mark their new year with the Flooding of the Nile River and the rising of Sirius, which is a time of rebirth for the sun god Horus. This would be around the time of autumnal equinox which was also used with the Phoenicians, while Greeks would use the winter solstice to celebrate the new year.
The Romans also had their version of new year’s which were celebrated during March 1st. This was changed when King Numa Pompilius added the months January and February, with January named after Janus, the god of beginnings, making Jan 1 the start of the new year, this would be alongside the introduction of the Julian calendar in 45BCE making the year be 365 (and a quarter) days which would solidify the date to be definitive with some inconsistencies though. This would also be the date when the new roman consuls would be inaugurated.
During the Middle Ages the date of the new year was shifted around to either being December 25th (which we know being Christmas day.) and March 25th (which is Annunciation is Christianity) the date of January 1st for being the new year wouldn’t be solidified in the religion until Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar, refining leap years and re-establishing January 1st as the official start, adopted widely by European nations and their colonies in 1582. (Another holiday was also inspired by those who refuse to conform to January 1st as the new year but that will have to wait until April.)
However not all at once as it took a while for everyone around the world to adopt the 1st of January as the new year as it took until 1752 (170 years after the Gregorian calendar was introduced mind you.) for England, it’s colonies and Ireland to adopt that day. The reason was that while Catholics adopted this immediately, it was the Protestants who refused to adopt that date until the 1750’s.
While the Gregorian calendar is the international standard, many cultures maintain traditional New Year dates to this day. One example is the Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year) which marks the first day of the traditional calendar. (It also goes through a cycle of 12 animals and this year would be the year of the horse.) This usually falls between January 20th and Feburary 20th with celebrations include parades, Firecrackers and other types of enteratinment, and in China while they still recognize January 1st as the Gregorian new year, the celebrations are overall less grand than the Asian equivalent.
Rosh Hashanah is another popular example as it is celebrated in Judaism as another example which falls during September or October and symbolizes a day of judgement with prayers of penitence, readings of the law and prophets, and special meals. While they also recognize the Gregorian date of January 1st, they branded it as the holiday of Sylvester or the civil new year.
Nowruz in Iranian culture, has the celebration be dated during the vernal equinox (which itself is around March 20th.) and it is calculated down to the exact point when the sun would cross the celestial equator and has also been celebrated for over 3 Millenia (not as long as the Babylonian celebration of Akitu , but it still deserves mentioning)
Allow me to Change Your Mind
The New Year to me can always bring a new perspective in mind to me, as it gives me time to reflect on what I have done this year and start looking forward to certain events happening in the coming year too.
Some people try to make new years resolutions around this time of what they want to do to improve themselves for the coming year. However to me, I feel like that is a little bit unrealistic (lets be honest how many resolutions have you held on for at least a month.) I would tend to look back at what I have done this past year and just generally try to keep on improving myself for the year ahead.
So to leave you guys off, allow me to give you a sneak peek about what has gotten me excited about this year, and who knows maybe I’ll be able to write an article based on those experiences. These will be based on my interests so I hope you can indulge me on my interests just for the rest of the article.
Well first off I plan on going into more detail of these new years celebrations as the day approaches, So those last three paragraphs were a tease of what’s to come.
The Winter Olympics will also be making its return in Feburary in Italy, so that will be a fun article to write about.
I also plan on making my return to Momocon near the end of May so I will try to come up with something to help tie it in.
The FIFA World Cup will be my highlight of June and July. (as well as some first hand experience of watching a soccer match live and in person.)
And finally for the second half of the year…Whatever comes to my mind is what I will write about. (I’m a guy who plays the life game by the day so we will see.)
And with that I hope to see you once again for another year of articles into 2026, see you then.
