2012 is almost here, and I
know you'll all need something to drunkenly discuss at your parties
tomorrow night. Without further delay, here are your Fun Friday New
Year's Facts:
1) Like Christmas, New
Year's is one of the oldest continuously celebrated holidays in the
world. The practice of ringing in a new year dates back at least as
far as ancient Babylon, about 4,000 years ago. The Babylonians also
invented the New Year's Resolution. They believed that vowing to
return borrowed items to their rightful owners, pay off debts and
other good stuff would bring them good luck in the year to come.
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| Actually doing it helps, too, you know. |
2) Even today, various
cultures around the world celebrate the New Year on different days.
The Chinese New Year, for instance, occurs on the first day of the
lunar calendar and can be on a different day each year, though it's
usually sometime between 20 January and 20 February. Many Muslims
also celebrate the New Year on the first day of the lunar calendar.
The Iranian New Year typically occurs on the date of the spring
equinox, usually 21 March. In Korea, they celebrate both the
Gregorian calendar New Year on 1 January, and the lunar calendar New
Year, because they know a good thing when they see it.
3) In the West, people have
celebrated New Year's Day on 1 January since the time of Julius Caesar. The original Roman calendar, with its 304 days split up into ten months, wasn't accurate, for some reason, so Julius
Caesar rectified this by establishing the Julian calendar in 46 BC.
This calendar, like the Gregorian calendar we use today, had 365
days, 12 months, and a leap year every four years. The months were
all the same lengths and most of them had the same name.
4) Even though Julius Caesar
commissioned some of the best scientific minds in Rome to create this
new calendar of his, it was still kinda f*cked up. That is, it missed
eleven minutes per year. These eleven lost minuted added up, so that,
about four centuries later, it was noticed that the calendar was
three days too short.
This had the effect of
pushing the date of the spring equinox forward a little every few
hundred years, so that by the late 16th century AD, the
spring equinox was occurring on 11 March, and not on 21 March, where
it damn well belonged. It wasn't just spring happening too soon, it
was Easter happening too soon, as well. If this had been allowed to
go on, Easter could be happening before itself, by now.
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| And then all hell would break loose. ~ I |
Pope Gregory XIII rectified
this awful situation by establishing the Gregorian calendar, which
most of the world still uses today. It drops three leap years every
four centuries, and no one ever notices, because we can't keep track
of them anyway.
5) Many people believe that
the tradition of celebrating the New Year with food, drink and
smooching originated with pagan customs. Throughout the Middle Ages,
the Catholic Church denounced New Year's celebrations, insisting that
it was sinful to exchange gifts, get drunk, leave out food for the
elves, or any of the other New Year's traditions that flourished in
medieval European culture. People kept doing their thing anyway, as
people will do, and the Church eventually saw that it wasn't gonna
win this one. It established a new religious feast day, the Feast of
the Circumcision, on 1 January, since that is the day when, by Jewish
custom, baby Jesus would have been circumcised. This may have made it
okay for Christians to celebrate the New Year, but I still don't
think it's necessary to commemorate the trimming of the holy weiner.
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| Oh man, look at the expression on Mary's face. Get that woman a drink. |
