Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Many of us know that April 1st was once the first day of the new year, and that this was during pre-Christian times, though there is the caveat here that the new year was also celebrated with the vernal equinox in some parts of Europe. We may also have been told that the April Fool’s Day tag came from the social pressure put on those still practicing the old traditions to encourage cohesion with Christianity.

 I can see the sense in April being the first day of the new year. There are the signs of life emerging in our gardens and hedgerows, and the nights are getting lighter and shorter, and the temperature rising. You can imagine what it must have felt like in those old days. I understand the gathering during winter solstice; it must have been a time of …. well to me it feels like pleading or bargaining with a deity. I think I would have been begging for the return of the sun. The nights would have been so long and cold and with death around every corner. So yes, April or at least feels like a renewal.

It is easy to romanticise the old festivals, I don’t know enough about the symbolism of Yule across northern Europe and am aware that we will have had a Christian influence in the teachings we received (but I would love to explore this and all things pre-Christian – let me know if you are interested in joining me). So given the hardships of winter, April would have been welcome.

It is said that Charles IX of France decreed that the new year should not coincide with Easter due to this date being governed by the lunar phases and therefore changing every year. He proposed it should be January 1st. This was in the1560s, and I had thought this change must have been earlier, after all Geoffrey Chaucer refers to it albeit the interpretation is disputed by academics, in the Canterbury Tales which were written in the latter part of the 1300s. There is also a poem referencing the pranks played on the first of April in 1561 which just pre-dates the change made in France. Nonetheless with the latter part of the 1500s Pope Gregory’s proposed calendar was accepted and there was an adoption of the Gregorian calendar with January 1st becoming the accepted start of the new year.

To me, it makes more sense that significant dates moved with astrological events such as the vernal equinox, and in South and Southeast Asia New Year’s Day is indeed celebrated around the middle of April, though their climate is different from ours and their rationale different. The Chinese new year is also a spring festival and is mutable being governed by the lunisolar calendar and can occur between late January and Late February. I could also accept September as being new year too, as I am sure many of us can having the academic calendar influencing our lives for many years. I cannot less with January 1st however.

January 1st was the day I would take myself off - now my husband has accepted this tradition recognising as he has its importance to me - for a long walk so I can reflect on the previous year and 'put it to bed/file it away' and move onto the next one. I don't want to be troubled by the past and this is my day for making peace with the year. Perhaps it is my Halloween. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but perhaps that is what it is.

History comes to us through the lens of the rich, the powerful and essentially the literate. Our understanding of early Britain seems to come from the Venerable Bede, and it is only archaeology which is disputing some of these previous understandings. An unrelated Channel 4 documentary included an interesting comment which I think relevant here, about how where once history was written by the victors, now with the age of social media and opinions, and how these are being transmitted quickly across the world, history will have a whole new identity. Think how easy it is to tumble down rabbit holes when researching a subject now – I question the impact of having access to so much opinion on our understanding of historical events. I can’t settle on what I think about this. Surely it's a good thing.....isn't it?