Symbolizing New Beginnings

Although different peoples around the world have different customs and beliefs, nearly everyone celebrates the New Year, although they do not all celebrate it at the same time. Bidding farewell to the old year and welcoming the New Year represent forgetting old worries and expecting a brighter future.

By Zlatica Ivković
Photo by Milan Melka

The New Year is a universal symbol of a new beginning. In the past, this beginning was symbolically marked with the coming of spring. All civilisations and peoples marked the New Year, although not all of them necessarily celebrated it. Even today, not everyone celebrates the New Year at the same time. In his book titled New Year: Its History, Customs, and Superstitions Theodor Gaster explains that there was hardly a people in times past or present, aboriginal or civilised, that did not celebrate the New Year in one way or another. He claims that no other holiday in the world has been celebrated on so many different dates or with so many seemingly different customs.

Chroniclers have recorded that the oldest known record of the New Year, dated at 2,000 years B.C, comes from Babylon in Mesopotamia. The New Year in Babylon began with the month closest to the spring equinox, and in Assyria with the month closest to the autumn equinox. For Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians, the year started on September 21.

From Mesopotamia, the custom of celebrating New Year spread to ancient Greece, and then to Rome. For ancient Greeks, the year commenced in winter, on December 21, at the time of the solstice, while according to the Roman Republic calendar, the New Year was celebrated on March 1. After 153 B.C., the official date for the beginning of the year was set on January 1, after Janus, the god of beginnings (and endings), and this custom persisted through 46 B.C. when Gaius Julius Caesar endorsed the Julian calendar and transferred all the customs from the Roman Saturnalia to the first day of January.

In the Jewish religious calendar, New Year falls on the holiday called Rosh Hashanah, on the first day of the month of Tishri, which began between September 6 and October 5. The Jewish people count the years from the time the world began and, according to Jewish tradition, we have entered the year 5764.

The Moslem calendar normally has 354 days, and each year begins with muharem, the first month of the Moslem calendar.

The Chinese celebrate New Year in late January or early February, at the time of the Spring Festival, but the custom is so old that no one can say with any certainty when it was established. The New Year in China is a time of family get-togethers, visiting friends and relatives and is celebrated for several days. The holiday ends with the Lantern Festival, as the Lion and Dragon dances are also part of the celebrations. Other Asian cultures, too, celebrate the New Year at different times. In southern India, the Tamils identify it with the hour of the winter solstice, the Tibetans celebrate it in February, and the Thais in March or April.

The Japanese, where New Year is the most popular holiday, celebrate it on January 1-3. The Japanese call their New Year ganjitsu (meaning the New Year’s Day), and believe the first day of the new year will determine how the rest of the year will go. According to custom, shimenawa, holy specially plaited rope – nawa- festooned with strips of white rice paper – shime - is hung on the entrance door of homes to keep away evil spirits. The doors are adorned with fern leaves, oranges, and lobsters – symbols of wealth, prosperity and longevity, respectively.

In the early Middle Ages, most of Christian Europe celebrated March 25 as the start of the new year, except in Anglo-Saxon England where New Year fell on December 25. The beginning of the New Year on January 1, as we celebrate it today, was definitively established by the Gregorian calendar in 1582 and immediately caught on in all Roman Catholic lands. In Scotland, the calendar was inaugurated in 1660, in Germany and Denmark in 1700, while England embraced it in 1752, and Russia in 1918.

Many nations identify New Year holidays with religious holidays, so that, for instance, Jews celebrate it at same time as Rosh Hashanah. Buddhist monks hand out gifts on New Year’s day, while Hindus devote gifts to their divinity. The Japanese have a tradition of visiting temples, while the Chinese devote their gifts to house deities and ancestors.

The evergreen tree is a symbol of life eternal among many ancient peoples (Egyptians, Chinese, Jews). There are several legends explaining the origin of the New Year’s tree.

The custom of decorating the New Year’s and Christmas trees goes back to the 11^th century. The Eden Tree, decorated with red apples on December 24 - on the Day of Adam and Eve, over time, beginning in Germany, came to be brought into one’s home and was decorated with cookies of various shapes. Candles, symbolizing Christ, were essential according to this custom. In the same room were small pyramids made of food and decorated with greenery, candles and stars. The two customs merged in the 16^th century, giving birth to the ritual of decorating the Christmas tree, a custom that spread throughout Germany, France and Austria in the 18^th century. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, brought a fir tree to Windsor Castle in 1841. This tree was decorated with toys and small presents, as well as wreaths, candy and paper flowers. The custom quickly spread beyond the royal circle into the middle class, and then to the masses.

In the early 17^th century, the tree moved to North America thanks to the Germans, and Western missionaries brought the Christmas tree to China and Japan over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The Christmas tree assumed its lavish appearance - symbolizing happiness, abundance and prosperity - in the 19^th century.