Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP33: New Year’s Day Used to Be March 25th

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Did you know that before 1752 New Year’s Day in England and its colonies was March 25th, not January 1st?

It’s true.

When England finally converted from the Julian calendar to the Papist Gregorian calendar it also changed the start of its year from March 25th to January 1st to conform with everyone else’s calendar year.

That is how four months got their names.

With March as the first month, September, October, November, and December were identified as the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the calendar year. Actually, September, October, November, and December had been the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months once before.

But Julius and Augustus Caesar added their months in the middle of the year and pushed the numbered months out of order, as they are today. However, in 567, the Council of Tours abolished January 1st as New Year’s Day, apparently because of the pagan connotation with the forward-and backward-looking Janice, and fixed March, the Christian face of Annunciation, as New Year’s Day.

This change also realigned September, October, November, and December as the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months. Then just over a thousand years later in 1582, when Pope Gregory commissioned a new calendar to replace the old Julian calendar, he abolished March 25th as New Year’s Day and reset January 1st as the start of the New Year. England, because it did not want to follow the dictates of a pope, continued with March 25th until it finally switched over to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

Why, you ask, was March 25th New Year’s Day?

First of all, isn’t it more appropriate that a new year begin as close as possible to the beginning of Spring, the vernal equinox when everything in nature is reborn.

That may partially explain a Spring New Year, but the real reason the church chose March 25th, is because that is exactly nine months before Christmas. In other words, in the Christian world March 25th would represent the conception or incarnation of Jesus in the womb of his mother Mary.

Actually, scholars now think Jesus was probably born in the Spring, possibly April, but that’s a whole other story.