New Year's Day
the first day of January. It was observed as a holiday in Rome. Ovid speaks of refraining from lawsuits and strife, and of smoking altars and white robed processions to the capitol. It appears from other sources that the exchange of greetings, the giving and receiving of presents, wishing good luck, masquerading, and feasting were features of New Year's Day in the time of the Empire. It appears to have been the one great holiday observed throughout the entire Roman Empire. The Persians celebrate their day by giving each other presents of eggs. There is a tradition among them that even the most careless trim the beard and take a bath on New Year's Day. Among the Saxons, New Year's was a day of wassail, drinking, and feasting. The French called on each other for presents. The Scotch gave New Year's presents. One of Burns' most characteristic poems bears the long title of "The Auld Farmer's New Year Morning Salutation to His Auld Mare Maggie on Giving Her the Accustomed Rip of Corn to Hansel in the New Year."
The observance of New Year's as a day of calling and social intercourse was introduced into the colonies by the Dutch of New York. The presidents, beginning with Washington, have been accustomed to receive on New Year's Day; but the good old Knickerbocker custom of making New Year's calls is falling into disuse.
In St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian cities, New Year's is a great day. According to the custom of the Greek Church, the morning is occupied with religious ceremonies. Boxes of candies are regarded as appropriate presents. Many of the wealthy send their bonbons in costly caskets of the choicest porcelain or of enameled silverware. The Japanese and the Chinese make much of New Year's. They decorate their doorways with boughs and flowers to debar the entrance of evil spirits.
To primitive people living in the northern hemisphere, or anywhere but on the equator for that matter, the changing height of the noonday sun must have had a fascination. All through the spring, the sun mounted higher each successive day. At noon of midsummer, the sun reached its highest point in the heavens. On that day the sun god in his glowing chariot made his longest and highest trip. Thereafter, day by day, the path of the sun grew shorter and lower. All through the autumn we may fancy the untutored mind filled with awe, if not fear, lest the sun sink in the west never to rise in the east again.
The changing length of day and night, too, were phenomena that must have impressed the mind of primitive man. The longest day, the shortest day, the spring day and night of equal length, the autumnal day and night of equal length,--either one of these four days, or else the day following one of these days, is a natural, an astronomical, beginning of a new year.
The year of historical nations began at the vernal equinox. The Roman pontiffs, whose business it was to see to it that festivals were celebrated on the proper date, were not sufficiently skilled to drop a day now and then (leap year); so as the centuries went by their New Year's day crept away farther and farther from the equinox until, in Caesar's day, it fell in June. This ruler shifted the New Year to the present season by adding eighty days to "the last year of confusion," and borrowed the Egyptian leap year to keep New Year's Day in one place thereafter. Persia holds to March 21st. Modern countries have adopted Caesar's date for the beginning of the year. The Christian church clung to the vernal equinox for centuries.
See Holidays