As the Clock Ticks Down Every New Year’s Eve, We Have Julius Caesar to Thank...

When the clock tolls Midnight, and you say Happy New Year be sure to add , “Thank you, Julius Caesar.” For reasons both political and personal, he’s the guy who gave us January 1 as the first day of every New Year.

Some historians say the ancient Babylonians were the first to record New Year resolutions about 4,000 years ago when they celebrated their New Year with the new moon at the Spring equinox when the sun is exactly above the equator and the day and night are equal in length. Other middle easterners opted for the Autumn equinox in September or the Winter one in December, while the Greeks chose the Winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

The Romans were more political. Their new years began on the day when a new consul first entered the office. When Julius Caesar arrived, he formalized the process based on then-current calculations of 365 and 1/4 days in the year to which he added 67 days so that 46 B.C.E. began on what is now our January 1. He also decreed that a day would be added to the next month to keep his calendar from falling out of step with the actual seasons.

Caesar's added days tipped the calendar slightly off balance, so in the 16th Century, Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius to come up with a new one with just one of every four years a leap year. The Gregorian calendar was , adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in 1582, and most European countries gradually followed suit: Spain and Portugal in 1556, France in 1564, Scotland, in 1660; Germany and Denmark around 1700; England, Ireland, and the British Empire in 1752; and Russia, in 1918. When Thailand signed on in 1941, that was pretty much assumed to make the date world wide but it is perfectly likely that somewhere in some corner of the globe the New Year begins on a different day.

Nonetheless, some customs are universal. The best example may be the depiction of the old year as an elderly man and the new one as a bright and bouncing baby. There is also a widespread belief that what a person does on the first day of the year predicts the next 12 months. And many think that the first guest to cross the threshold at a New Year’s Day gathering is also a prediction, a custom known as the “first foot” most commonly observed in Great Britain.

But there is one thing that makes a New York New Year special. As noted on the web site www.history.com, when the New Year 1907 drew near, New York Times’ publisher Adolph S. Ochs was looking for a something to make his annual New Year’s Eve party exciting. For three years, he’d done the deed with midnight fireworks atop the paper’s 25-story headquarters at Broadway and 42nd Street, newly named Times Square. Unfortunately, that rained so much hot ash that that it was banned forever after. But looking downtown, Ochs noted the Western Union Building dropping a metal ball to mark Noon every day of the week. Ever the innovator, Ochs decided to go them one better. As New Yorkers made their way into Times Square on December 31, 1907, looking up they saw a wooden and iron ball illuminated by 100 electric lights ball sitting on a flagpole. As Midnight approached the ball slowly descended until it reached bottom and the number 1908 light up on the building’s parapet. Thus the New York tradition for the New Year was born.