Happy New Year 2023 Less than a week is left for the new year to come. The new year is considered to start from 12 o’clock in the night of 31st December and on 1st January the calendars change all over the world. Just on Saturday night, 2022 will be bid farewell and people all over the world will wish each other Happy New Year 2023. But do you know that the new year did not always start from the month of January itself. A few thousand years ago, the New Year was celebrated in the month of March.
March used to be the beginning of the new year.
According to the Roman calendar, January is the first month of the year. But there is an interesting story behind it too. Numa Pompilus was the king of Rome and during his period there were 10 months in the calendar instead of 12. At that time there were 310 days in a year and a week was of 8 days. The special thing is that at that time the new year used to start from the month of March. But it was Numa Pompilus who changed the first month of the new year from March to January. Actually the month of March was named after the Roman god Mars. Mars is considered the god of war. Numa did not want the year to begin with the name of the god of war, so he made January the first month. January is named after the Roman god Janus and it is believed that he used to have two faces. Symbolically, the front face is considered as the beginning of the year and the back face is considered as the end of the year.
Julian Caesar created a 12-month calendar
The credit for creating the 12-month calendar goes to Roman Emperor Julius Caesar around 46 BC. Caesar got information from astronomers that it takes 365 days and six hours for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. After this, he made a new calendar based on the new calculation in which 310 days were divided into 365 days and on this basis a year of 12 months was formed. The 7th month of the year is named after and dedicated to Emperor Julius Caesar. Earlier, the name of July was Quintilis. However, after this, a new calendar came again, which was based only on the difference in time taken during the orbit of the Sun. Pope Gregory XIII of the Roman Church started work on it. It was named Gregorian calendar but in this also the new year used to start from January 1 only.