Why is New Year marked on January 1? Here's history of 1st day of the year, ahead of 2022

People across the world are gearing up for the New Year, 2022. The ushering of the new year is considered a celebratory event with events being planned in various parts of the world. As per the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar today, New Year falls on January 1.  

However, did you know that the New Year was once not celebrated on January 1? Days in March, September or December were also marked as New Year once upon a time as per different cultures. Here's looking at why the New Year is celebrated on January 1, and the history associated with the day.

Why is New Year celebrated on January 1?

As per the Roman calendar, March used to be considered as the first month of the year. This practice was common till 153 BCE.

At that time, the year used to be of just 10 months. Second Roman King Numa Pompilius, however, added two more months to the year, after which January became the first month. The name of the month is said to have come from Janus, the Roman God for beginnings. 

January 1 is also the first day of the year or New Year as a part of the Julian calendar. Julius Caesar made numerous revisions to the Roman calendar in 46 BCE. However, January continued to be the first month of the year, thus making January 1 as the New Year. 

After this system went on for many years, it is said that the Julian calendar was stopped in numerous Christian countries. They started to mark March 25 or December 25 to honour events based on religious significance like the Feast of the Annunciation or the birth of Jesus ie Christmas respectively. 

Later, there emerged more doubts in the Julian calendar over inaccuracy regarding the calculation of the leap years, due to its assumption that average solar year was 365.25 days long.  This was rectified by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582.

He reduced the average year from  365.25 days to 365.242 to prevent the drift of the calendar, the earlier arrival of some of the events, in terms of the equinoxes. The calendar also spaced the leaps years to correspond to the Earth's movement around the Sun. 

While some countries immediately accepted the Gregorian calendar, it took many years for the others to accept, before eventually this calendar, became a commonly-used across the world. In some countries like Ethiopia, January 1 is still not considered the New Year, while the traditional new year as per Chinese and Korean cultures come around January-February, but not January 1. 

Countries like India, which marks the Gregorian January 1, also has different New Years as per different religions.