Happy 2025: Who decided to celebrate New Year on January 1?

Happy New Year: Goodbye 2024! As the calendar turned to January 1, the world welcomed the year 2025 with new resolutions and hope. The year 2025 is now here. People across the globe celebrated the new year with fireworks and night outs, and some just spent the night chilling at their homes as the clock struck 12.

But have you wondered why is the New Year celebrated on January 1? Where did the concept come from?

Well, according to Britannica, the Roman republican calendar and the Julian calendar both recognised January 1 as the beginning of the New Year. The date was chosen partly in honor of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and the month’s namesake," the report added. He was the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings.

This is also where the name for the month, January, came from, since Janus was depicted as having two opposite faces. One face looked back into the past, and the other peered forward to the future, EarthSky reported.

Oldest New Years celebration

Meanwhile, the TIMES magazine said the oldest recorded new year festivities date back to 2000 BC in ancient Mesopotamia, where Iraq is now.

In China, the year begins on the second new moon following the winter solstice, which usually falls around late January or February, marking the start of spring.

According to the report, a new year in ancient Egypt began when Sirius—the brightest star in the night sky—appeared around mid-July. This coincided with the cyclical flooding of the Nile, which helped irrigate nearby farmland.

Ancient Rome was quite a different story, it added. By 45 BC, the new Julian calendar was created, and the civil year in Rome now officially began on January 1.

The Gregorian calendar also formalised January 1 at the start of every new year.

But where did the idea of New Year resolutions come from? It also stems from the ancient Roman custom. To celebrate the new year, the Romans made promises to Janus.