For as long as there has been a calendar, there have been celebrations in honour of the new calendar year. For most of us, whether our civic calendar is the Julian or the Gregorian, that date is indisputably January 1.

It wasn’t always undisputed, though. In fact, though the January 1 New Year has ancient roots it was not fully adopted, even in its original home, in Christian Europe until the 18th century.

Julius Caesar Moved the New Year to January

Julius Caesar did not invent the January 1 New Year, but may have reintroduced it.

In ancient Rome, the New Year used to fall in March, following the much older Babylonian example of a New Year’s date near the Spring Equinox, just as is still the case for the Persian New Year. Romance languages still hint at this earlier custom by calling spring “the first season”. The French call it printemps, in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese it’s primavera, and in Romanian it’s primăvară.

At the time Julius Caesar was elected pontifex maximus and put in charge of reforming the calendar, which was quickly getting out of hand and displacing spring festivals into midwinter, it was customary for consuls to take office on January 1. The civil and the religious year had once been one and a the same, both running from January to December, so what Julius Caesar – or those he delegated the calendar work to – did was simply to realign the two and make January 1 the New Year again.

That was in 46 BCE, and thus 45 BCE was the first year in Rome – at least for some time – to officially start on January 1.

Multiple Calendars and the Church Year

Since Rome spread soon thereafter, expanding over the area between Britain and Syria, it would only seem logical that the January 1 date for New Year was quickly adopted uniformly and accepted ever thereafter. Of course, history is rarely straight forward.

Much as is the case today, even then in the Rome Empire there were multiple calendars in use at the same time. January 1 was the start of the year on paper, but not in practice.

Not even the spread of Christianity and the Catholic Church’s adoption of the Julian calendar would help. To this day, the Catholic liturgical year still begins with the First of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas Day. Many Catholic countries, however, began their years with Annunciation Day, which just so happens to be March 25 and rather close to the Spring Equinox. Others, like France, chose an Easter date, notably normally also near the Spring Equinox.

All the more confusingly, at least in hindsight, many places recognised January 1 as the start of the calendar year, but celebrated the New Year at one of these other dates.

A Slow Adoption of the January 1 Date

Celebrating a January 1 New Year date is sometimes known as the circumcision style of dating, as January 1 is traditionally the date of the circumcision of Christ.

The circumcision style came into fashion at “the official New Year” the 16th century. In 1544, The Holy Roman Empire adopted the circumcision style and in the next 50 years many nations, including all of Scandinavia, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal, had chosen January 1 as the official New Year as well. The British Isles, not including Scotland, lagged behind until 1752, favouring the annunciation style of dating.

If you are interested in finding out more about the history of all things New Year, Jennifer Ciotta has written about Historical Russian New Year’s Traditions and Dawn Ouedraogo has written about Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year Celebration, while Rachel Bellerby shares some information about The Medieval New Year Feast of Fools on Suite101.

About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101.