Happy New Year, and welcome to my first Bianca Babbles post of 2024! I hope you all enjoyed a restful festive season and are refreshed and ready to return to normal. New Year’s Day is a public holiday in the UK, but while researching for this post, I’ve learned this is only recent.
I will start this year as I mean to continue, with some historical titbits about the celebration of the new year.
Did you know?
- Ancient Romans celebrated the start of the new year in March when the weather warmed up. As I’ve mentioned before, the Roman calendar only had ten months, until January and February were added in c. 500 BCE.
- Julius Caesar declared 1st January as the start of the new year in 46 BCE. The month was dedicated to, and named after, Janus, the Roman god of doorways and gateways (new beginnings and endings).
- To correct inaccuracies in the Julian Calendar, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar in 1652. This also recognised 1st January as the start of the New Year, but the British (and its colonies) did not adopt this until 1752.
The British New Year
The Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750 aligned Britain and its colonies with the rest of Europe. Before that, they celebrated New Year’s Day on 25th March, also known as Lady Day.
New Year’s Day is now a public holiday, but it has only been so since 1974 – only 50 years ago! Another anniversary this year marks the centenary of the broadcasting of the tolls of Big Ben. They were first broadcast over the radio in 1924.
Hogmanay has long been a cultural tradition in Scotland (they also take the 2nd as a public holiday), but it was never really celebrated in England. This has changed over the years, and with employee absenteeism high on 1st January, the government recognised the need to create a public holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
So, I’m going to leave you to enjoy the rest of my day off work and prepare myself to return to the day job and 5 am writers club tomorrow.
One thought on “Welcome to the New Year!”