Is it an accident that Christmas and New Year fall so close together? Giving us a “holiday season” of two major holidays stuck so close together that we can say “happy holidays” in the plural and have lots of time off work at the end of the year?
It’s no coincidence. Both holidays are keyed to the winter solstice.
In Roman times, when Christianity was new, there was a feast of Saturnalia around the winter solstice. Everyone cites this as an influence on fixing the date of Christmas. But there was a Roman holiday that was much more influential for the date of Christmas, the “Birthday of Sol Invictus,” which was a feastday of the Mithraic religion, a religion of Iranian origin which had become very popular in the Roman Empire about the time Christianity started. Mithras was a sun god, and the solstice falling at December 25 back in those days (the precession of the equinoxes, you know), this holiday commemorated the sun’s light beginning to grow again out of the winter darkness. Sol invictus means ‘the unconquered sun’.
New Year used to be March 25, marking the spring equinox. But it got moved back to January 1, to be close to the winter solstice. I think people must have felt it was better to start the first of the year on the first of a month. That way you wouldn’t have part of a month in one year and the rest of it in a different year.
In modern European culture, the year starts near the winter solstice and the day is considered to start at midnight.
In ancient times, the year started at the spring equinox and the day started at sunrise.
In Jewish reckoning, the year starts around the autumnal equinox and the day starts at sunset. ;j
Hmm, do we see a pattern here? A correlation of year starting dates and day starting times? Making an analogy between the cycle of the year and the cycle of the day? Sunrise is like spring. Sunset is like autumn. Midnight is like winter. I have not yet seen a culture that starts the year at the summer solstice or the day at noon, but these very absences fit the pattern too.