Ancient calendar’s New Year’s Day lets us have a fresh start today

Happy New Year! Wait, isn’t it a little late for that? Yes — under our current Gregorian calendar. For hundreds of years, however, March 25, not Jan. 1, was the first day of the year in Europe and its colonies. It’s a tradition worth reviving, if only informally, because it calls to mind what a new year represents.

In the West, Jan. 1 has been a common but by no means universal day to start the year. The ancient Romans used a 10-month calendar that started March 1 and ended with December, from the Latin “decem,” meaning 10th. Sometime in the period of the Republic (509 to 27 B.C.), January and February joined the calendar, and the first day of the year shifted to Jan. 1. Julius Caesar codified the new year’s date in his 45 B.C. reforms that produced the Julian calendar.

Still, local variations abounded as Rome became an empire. In the Eastern Mediterranean, for example, Sept. 23, the birthday of Emperor Augustus, began the year.

Christians, growing more numerous in late antiquity, wanted a calendar that reflected their own cosmology. Popular dates for Christian new years included Easter, though it moved from year to year, and Christmas, which at least stayed fixed.

The most widely used date, however, was March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, the day celebrating when the Virgin Mary was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and accepted God’s plan for her to bear Jesus. The symbolism was clear: time should be reckoned by when the savior became man, not by the birth of a worldly emperor or by pagan tradition.

The practice of starting a year on March 25 still varied, though. Some places in Spain, Portugal, and southern France kept the Roman system and calculated their years from 38 B.C., starting each year in January. An attempt at a definitive reform came in 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII addressed the Julian calendar’s inability to set the correct date for Easter. As a secondary measure, the Gregorian calendar restored New Year’s Day to Jan. 1.

But Protestant countries, dismissing Jan. 1 as mere popery, resisted at first, though they gradually fell in line, some more gradually than others. Britain and its colonies gave in only when Dec. 31, 1751, was followed by Jan. 1, 1752.

Returning March 25 to the head of the calendar has obvious benefits for Christians, especially those Christians who honor Mary’s role in salvation history. It reminds them that Jesus became man at a specific moment in time because of Mary’s “yes.” Their lives, like the year itself, should begin with a similar “yes” to God.

But a March 25 new year has more than sectarian appeal. It reminds everyone that calendars are part science and part cultural constructions. Back in 2018, the physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that “New Years Day on the Gregorian Calendar is a cosmically arbitrary event, carrying no Astronomical significance at all.” His trolling had a point: it’s culture that gives particular dates their meaning.

Different cultures figure their time differently, even today. According to the Jewish calendar, the year is currently 5781, figured from the date of creation. Under the Muslim calendar it is 1442, counting from when the Prophet Muhammad traveled to Medina. Many Asian countries, meanwhile, celebrate the lunar new year. In China, Feb. 12, 2021, ushered in the year 4718.

Though we all have only 24 hours in a day (give or take a few milliseconds), our sense of time varies between cultures. Time itself has a history.

Remembering March 25 as a second New Year’s Day would give everyone a second chance at self-improvement. Millions of Americans make a New Year’s resolution like exercising, losing weight, spending more time with family or breaking the social-media habit. But people quickly falter and give up.

Maybe another New Year’s Day would help. Are you already back to eating junk food and fighting on Facebook? Don’t wait for next January. Resolve to get back at it now. It’s March 25, a new year is dawning. Or it would be if it were still 1751. Still, it’s worth remembering a new year for what it is: a chance to start fresh, which can come on March 25 — or any day of the year.