The word
year is etymologically the same as
hour (Skeat), and signifies a going, movement etc. In
Semitic, the word for "year" signifies repetition, sc. of the course of the sun (Gesenius).
Since there was no
necessary starting-point in the circle of the year, we find among different nations, and among the same at different epochs of their history, a great variety of dates with which the new year began.
The opening of spring was a natural beginning, and in the Bible itself there is a close relationship between the beginning of the year and the seasons.
The ancient Roman year began in March, but Julius Caesar, in correcting the calendar (46 B.C.), made January the first month.
Though this custom has been universally adopted among
Christian nations, the names, September, October, November, and December (i.e., the seventh, eight, ninth, and tenth), remind us of the past,
when March began the year.
Christian writers and councils condemned the
heathen orgies and excesses connected with the festival of the
Saturnalia, which were celebrated at the beginning of the year:
Tertullian blames
Christians who regarded the customary presents called
strenae (Fr.
étrennes) from the goddess Strenia, who presided over New Year's Day (cf. Ovid,
Fasti, 185-90) as mere tokens of friendly intercourse (De Idol. xiv), and towards the end of the sixth century the Council of Auxerre (can. I) forbade
Christians strenas diabolicas observare. T
he II Council of
Tours held in 567 (can. 17) prescribes
prayers and a Mass of expiation for New Year's Day, adding that this is a practice long in use (
patres nostri statuerunt). Dances were forbidden, and
pagan crimes were to be expiated by
Christian fasts (St. Augustine, Serm., cxcvii-viii in P.L., XXXVIII, 1024;
Isidore of Seville,
De Div. Off. Eccl., I, xli;
Trullan Council, 692, can. lxii).
When Christmas was fixed on 25 Dec.,
New Year's Day was sanctified by commemorating on it the
Circumcision, for which feast the Gelasian Sacramentary gives a Mass (
In Octabas Domini).
Christians did not wish to make the celebration of this feast very solemn, lest they might seem to countenance in any way the
pagan extravagance of the opening year.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: New Year's Day