Wish You All A Very Happy New Year

“Another fresh new year is here . . .Another year to live!To banish worry, doubt, and fear,To love and laugh and give!This bright new year is given meTo live each day with zest . . .To daily grow and try to beMy highest and my best!I have the opportunityOnce more to right some wrongs,To pray for peace, to plant a tree,And sing more joyful songs!"
- William Arthur Ward

Well, I think this will be my last blog for this year. One more year gone, with some dreams fulfilled whereas many more still waiting to be fulfilled, with some good moments as well as some bad, some successes & some failures, some happiness & some disappointments, some smiles & some tears…but all in all I am happy that one more year has passed ahead & God has given me yet another year to carry on with my dreams…
Do you know the origin of New Year celebration? I found this info to be quite interesting, so thought of summarizing & putting up here. Well, according to online sources (Britannica, Wikipedia etc.), the celebration of the new year on January 1st is a relatively new phenomenon.

• The earliest recording of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia,in 2000 B.C. and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, ie., in Mid-March.
• Then later on the early Roman calendar designated March 1 as the New Year. The calendar had just ten months, beginning with March.
• The first time the new year was celebrated on January 1st was in Rome in 153 B.C. (In fact, the month of January did not even exist until around 700 B.C., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius, added the months of January and February.) The new year was moved from March to January because that was the beginning of the civil year, the month that the two newly elected Roman consuls—the highest officials in the Roman republic—began their one-year tenure.
• In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar & this Julian calendar decreed that the New Year would occur with January 1, and within the Roman world, January 1 became the consistently observed start of the New Year.
• However, in 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on Dec. 25, the birth of Jesus; March 1; March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation; and Easter.
• Finally In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform restored January 1 as New Year’s Day & most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately.

Since then, January 1st is observed as New Year’s Day in most of the countries. However, if we go culture wise deep, I know most of us have got different new year’s day depending upon our caste & religion but globally most of us now follow Jan 1st as New Year’s Day.
I would like to wish all my blogger friends a New Year filled with New Joy, New Hope & New Beginnings…A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!!!