the calendar that rules your life is a relic designed to placate a two-faced god and to win a war that ended more than two thousand years ago. there is nothing natural about starting the year on 1 january: it is not a solstice, not a harvest, not anything you can see in the sky. it is a roman formality that never stopped being repeated.
in ancient rome, 1 january — the kalendae ianuariae — opened under the patronage of janus, the god of doorways, beginnings and endings. the month bears his name for that reason. the romans depicted him with two opposing faces: one looking back, towards the year that was closing, and the other forward, towards the one beginning. he was the guardian of the threshold, the divinity invoked first in any prayer, before even jupiter, because without him there was no access to the other gods.
but the date has no mystical origin, only an administrative and military one. from 222 bce, the consuls — the two supreme magistrates of the republic — took office on 15 march (earlier the date had varied: 1 may, among others). the change came in 153 bce, and the reason was a war. rome was mired in hispania against the celtiberians of segeda and numantia, and the senate needed the new command to reach the front as soon as possible; waiting until march handed the enemy two and a half months’ advantage. so they brought the inauguration forward to the first day of january. what was born as a wartime emergency measure stayed for ever, and in the process turned that day into the official start of the consular year.
you are not celebrating the beginning of the cosmos: you are celebrating the day two roman politicians had to be ready to invade hispania.
with the date fixed, the rite arranged itself around it. while the incoming consuls swore their office, climbed to the capitol and sacrificed white oxen to jupiter, the people gave themselves over to a very specific domestic superstition: starting the year with good omens. they exchanged strenae, small gifts of good augury — dates, figs and honey so the year would be sweet, coins to attract wealth. they watched the first word spoken, the first work begun, the first foot to cross the threshold. the whole day functioned as a miniature presage of the rest of the year.
it is worth qualifying something popular writing tends to gloss over: 1 january as “civil” new year coexisted for a long time with other beginnings. the most archaic calendar started in march — that is why september, october, november and december retain names that mean seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth — and during the middle ages much of europe returned to dates like easter or 25 march. 1 january was not universally imposed in the west between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, in the wake of the gregorian calendar reform of 1582. that is to say, it was not even an unbroken inheritance: it was a revived romanisation.
so every new year’s eve, when you toast a beginning full of promise, you are unknowingly repeating an administrative rite of the roman republic. the politicians swore their office, the people gave each other honey to ward off bad luck, and everyone pretended that an ordinary winter day was, by decree, the beginning of the world. we keep on repeating the gesture, convinced it is a modern festival.
