The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays... It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago... In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible crescent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring)...
The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days... Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, but it is safe to say that modern New Year's Eve festivities pale in comparison...
The beginning of spring is a logical time to start a new year... After all, it is the season of rebirth, of planting new crops, and of blossoming... January 1st, on the other hand, has no astronomical nor agricultural significance, it is purely arbitrary...
The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun... In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1st to be the beginning of the new year... But tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar... It again established January 1st as the new year... But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days...
Although in the first centuries AD the Romans continued celebrating the new year, the early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as pagan... But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began having its own religious observances concurrently with many of the pagan celebrations, and New Year's Day was no exception - it was established as the Feast of Christ's Circumcision... New Years is still observed as this feast day by various denominations... During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years... January 1st has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years...
The tradition of using a baby to signify the new year was begun in Greece around 600 BC... It was their tradition at that time to celebrate the god of wine, Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that god as the spirit of fertility... Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of rebirth...
Although the early Christians denounced the practice as pagan, the popularity of the baby as a symbol of rebirth forced the Church to reevaluate its position... The Church finally allowed its members to celebrate the new year with a baby, which was to symbolize the birth of the baby Jesus... The use of an image of a baby with a New Years banner as a symbolic representation of the new year was brought to early America by the Germans... They had used the effigy since the fourteenth century...
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