In present day, with most countries now using the Gregorian calendar, New Year’s Day is among the most celebrated public holidays in the world. The day liturgically marked the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus, which is still observed as such in the Anglican Church and Lutheran Church.
About New Year’s Day in brief
In pre-Christian Rome under the Julian calendar, the day was dedicated to Janus, god of gateways and beginnings, for whom January is also named. In present day, with most countries now using the Gregorian calendar as their de facto calendar, New Year’s Day is among the most celebrated public holidays in the world. The day liturgically marked the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus, which is still observed as such in the Anglican Church and Lutheran Church. In 567 AD, the Council of Tours formally abolished 1 January as the beginning of the year. Mediaeval calendars nonetheless often continued to display the months running from January to December, despite their readers reckoning the transition from one year to the next on a different day. Among the 7th-century pagans of Flanders and the Netherlands, it was the custom to exchange gifts on the first day of the new year. However, on the date that European Christians celebrated the New Year, they exchanged Christmas presents because New Year’s Day fell within the 12 days of the Christmas season in the Christian liturgical calendar.
Because of the leap year, the date of Easter had drifted backward since the Nicaea Council decided on the computation of Easter in 325. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII declared theGregorian calendar widely used today, correcting the error by a deletion of 10 days. The Gregorian Calendar also restored 1 January’s Day as New year’s Day, almost immediately after it was adopted almost immediately by Protestant countries. It was only gradually adopted among Protestant countries, for example, among the British, that it was only adopted among Protestants for six months before it was widely used for six years in a row. The New Year was celebrated on 25 December in honour of the birth of Jesus; 1 March in the old Roman style; 25 March in honour Lady Day and the feast of the Annunciation.
You want to know more about New Year’s Day?
This page is based on the article New Year’s Day published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 01, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
