By the time you read this I suppose you have made your New Year’s resolutions. It is even possible you may have broken one or two already. One could suggest you make a simple one like improve yourself and stick with it. These are a few of the things we ordinarily do right after we celebrate the New Year on 1 January. That is one of the coldest times of the year.

Here in Calhoun County we have cold spells even in this age of global warming or cooling, for sure the climate changes. In this cooler season you need to watch your plants, feed the birds and other creatures that don’t have something to keep them in food.

Did you ever ponder why the year starts on that day? It is just an arbitrary time there is no seasonal reason. The winter solstice, when the Sun is furthest south, is 10 days earlier.

That winter date would be a logical first of the year. It is when Mother Nature changes seasons. Actually, that is when the Ancient Greeks held their celebrations for the New Year. That wasn’t the only culture using seasons as year starters. Back around 2000 BC the Mesopotamians used when spring started as the time to start a new year. Things were beginning to grow at that time. Astronomers call it the vernal equinox.

Since we are all human and like to be different the Phoenicians decided that the time to start a new year would be fall, approximately six months later. I guess that is like animals who go into hibernation. That is what we now call the Autumnal equinox. So as you can see folks didn’t always agree even that far back in time.

Those thousands of years ago they had figured out that the year had seasons that repeated in regular cycle. It made sense to them that Nature had picked certain times to each season one of those times should be when the New Year started.. In those early days the folks were closer to Nature.

This was back when the world was sorting itself out on calendars and such. .The Romans began to take charge of those things. They set up the Julian calendar. It has evolved into our modern day Gregorian calendar. In those calendars the month names came from mostly Roman or Latin sources. January was named after the Roman God Janus, the two faced God. One face looked back to the past and the other looked forward to the future.

For a great while the choice of spring as the start for the year was predominate. It fit with the dominate agricultural culture. But as time went along somewhere in the 16th century the folks started to use the 1 January date. That Janus name got us into looking back to last year and on to next year. It is an arbitrary choice close to a seasonal choice. Who knows it might change in the distant future..