Featured Image Credit: Nora Carol Photography / MR.Cole_Photographer / Getty
You might be shocked to find out that New Year's Day used to occur on March 25th instead of January 1st, but there's a good reason why it took so long for 'modern' traditions to be accepted.
There are few bigger global celebrations than the arrival of a new year, with countries all across the world ringing in the bells despite some rather extreme time differences.
Many go out to celebrate it with friends and family, there are plenty of firework displays to bring in the new year with style, and some might even want to relish in a double celebration by flying on a plane that goes back in time.
January 1st wasn't always the day of celebration though, as for most of history people celebrated the move into the next calendar year on March 25th - and for good reason too.
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To understand the process you have to go all the way back to 715 BCE and the reign of Roman king Numa Pompilius.
As detailed by Britannica, it is understood that Numa revised the Roman republican calendar to have January replace March as the first month of the year, which made sense as Janus - who January is named after - is the god of all beginnings.
This was kept the same with Julius Caesar's move to the Julian calendar - which extended the year to 12 months and 365.25 days - but after the fall of the Roman empire many Christian countries altered this so that the new year would instead fall on March 25 and December 25.
This is because within Christianity, March 25 indicates the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrating the day in which the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she would conceive Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
December 25, then, makes sense as well, as this was the date in which Jesus was born and is paired nicely with the celebration of Christmas.
However, due to leap year amendments the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, and with that it reverted the start of the year to be January 1st once more.
This is the same system that almost every country uses to this day, and while certain countries like France, Spain, and Italy immediately converted to the system upon its introduction, it took some Protestant and Orthodox nations almost 200 years before they made the switch.
Both the United Kingdom and its American colonies at the time were among those who resisted the change, and it wasn't until 1752 that they finally embraced January 1st and left the Feast of the Annunciation in the past as a celebration of the coming year.
It goes to show that even the simplest things like starting the year on January 1st weren't always a given fact in history, and it's surprising how recent some countries were in changing their patterns despite official shifts centuries before.
