Did you know that the earliest record of a New Year’s Day celebrations was in 2000 B.C.?
In fact, the earliest records of New Year’s celebrations are from 2000 B.C. Mesopotamia. According to Earth Sky, that celebration – and various other ancient festivities of the new year – were celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, which was around March 20. Interestingly, the ancient Phoenicians, Egyptians, and even Persians began their new year with the autumnal equinox around September 20. While the ancient Greeks celebrated on the winter solstice, around December 20.
Celebrations of New Year’s Day in January feel out of practice in the Middle Ages. According to History.com, “even those who strictly adhered to the Julian calendar did not observe the New Year exactly on January 1.” The reason being that Caesar and Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer who helped create the Julian calendar, failed to calculate the correct value for the solar year. You see, ol’ Caesar and his astronomer friends mistake was an 11 minute a year error, which may not sound like much. However, that error added 7 days by the year 1000, and 10 days by the 15th century. That’s quite a whoops!
You may be wondering why we celebrate on January 1st? After all it’s so fundamental at this point that it’s practically as though nature ordained it.
However, it is in fact, a civil event that has nothing to do with nature at all. Our modern celebration of New Year’s comes from an ancient Roman custom, the feast of Janus, the god of doorways and beginnings. As a matter of fact, the month of January also comes from Janus, who was portrayed as having two faces. One face of Janus looked back into the past, and the other peered forward to the future. Makes sense, right?
It took until about 1582, when the Gregorian calendar was implemented for January 1st to become the official New Year’s date. The calendar omitted 10 days for that year and established the new rule that only one of every four centennial years should be a leap year. But why do we drop a ball (or anything else) to celebrate New Year’s?
As millions watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, have you ever wondered why we drop a ball? Well, it all started in 1904 when the New Year’s Eve festivities moved to the New York Times building from the Church of Manhattan.
Well, the actual idea of a ball dropping to signal the passage of time dates back long before New Year’s Eve was ever celebrated in Times Square. In fact, the very first “ball” was dropped from England’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball dropped at one o’clock every afternoon, which allowed the captains of ships to accurately set their chronometers. This was a vital navigational instrument and of great importance. Times Square says, there are around 150 public time-balls installed around the world, though few survive and still work.
Today, New Year’s Eve in Times Square is an international phenomenon. The Times Square ball has a total of 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles. About 192 of those were replaced this year to introduce 2019’s theme of the Gift of Harmony. Corey and I were lucky enough to celebrate New Years Eve in Times Square to ring in 2009. It was so much fun and hard to describe unless you’ve actually been there. Unfortunately, the year we went it was -1 degree but we were lucky enough to have gone with Wounded Warrior Project who had heated vans we could warm up in.
I hope you have a safe and fun New Year’s Eve and that 2019 bring you everything that you are hoping for!
