To all the wonderful, caring people who participate in this forum:
I wish all of you a very Happy New Year full of luck, prosperity and good health. May all of you be blessed with your wishes and dreams, and may you share your luck with those around you. For those of you who have members overseas, may they come home safely into your loving arms. May we all be successful in everything we do in 2010!!
God Bless All of You!!! and from my family to your Happy New Year!
Shannie
The fact that New Year's Day is on January first has an interesting history!
In 46 B.C.E. the Roman emperor Julius Caesar first established January 1 as New Years day. Janus was the Roman god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking forward and one back. Caesar felt that the month named after this god (January) would be the appropriate door to the year. Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets. In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgiesa ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.
After William the Conqueror (AKA William the Bastard and William of Normandy) became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the date established by the Roman pagans, January 1. This move ensured that the commemoration of Jesus birthday (December 25) would align with Williams coronation, and the commemoration of Jesus circumcision (January 1) would start the new year - thus rooting the English and Christian calendars and his own Coronation). Williams innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.
On New Years Day 1577 Pope Gregory XIII decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services. On Year Years Day 1578 Gregory signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a House of Conversion to convert Jews to Christianity. On Yew Years 1581 Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community. Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII (AKA Ugo Boncompagni, 1502-1585) abandoned the traditional Julian calendar. By the Julian reckoning, the solar year comprised 365.25 days, and the intercalation of a leap day every four years was intended to maintain correspondence between the calendar and the seasons. Really, however there was a slight inaccuracy in the Julian measurement (the solar year is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds = 365.2422 days). This slight inaccuracy caused the Julian calendar to slip behind the seasons about one day per century. Although this regression had amounted to 14 days by Pope Gregorys time, he based his reform on restoration of the vernal equinox, then falling on March 11, to the date had 1,257 years earlier when Council of Nicaea was convened (March 21, 325 C.E.). Pope Gregory made the correction by advancing the calendar 10 days. The change was made the day after October 4, 1582, and that following day was established as October 15, 1582. The Gregorian calendar differs from the Julian in three ways: (1) No century year is a leap year unless it is exactly divisible by 400 (e.g., 1600, 2000, etc.); (2) Years divisible by 4000 are common (not leap) years; and (3) once again the New Year would begin with the date set by the early pagans, the first day of the month of Janus - January 1.
Happy New Year Everyone! I hope we all have a blessed year.
Thanks for the history Mensch.
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