Why is it that in Western culture both the day and the year start at seemingly unusual times? The day starts at midnight in the middle of the night, and the year starts on January 1st, in the middle of the winter. In other cultures the day begins either at sunrise or sunset, and the year begins either in the spring, or in the fall, at the end of the harvest season.
Is there a common origin to this phenomenon in Western culture?
As for the time of day starting. The cultures that use that are not as a whole using precise times. Seeing as sunrise and sunsets change from day to day. Precise times are important in most societies.
The Julian calendar we use was not developed in “western” societies.
I imagine it is precisely because “nothing is happening” that the middle of the night and the middle of the winter were chosen.
When I was involved with research, nothing mucked things up more than a time change in the middle of things.
>> When I was involved with research, nothing mucked things up more than a time change in the middle of things.
For this reason astronomers count days from noon to noon. Thank goodness there are more of us than of them.
Rome is in the East?
Even the societies that cling to the original Julian reckoning for religious purposes tend to be Western (Greece, Russia) rather than Eastern societies (although they tend to be East of the U.S. and the U.K.).
At the time the Julian calendar was formulated there was no east and west as we see east and west today.
I dunno. I’m sure that perceptions have changed somewhat over the years, but I’m still pretty sure that the civilizations of India and China were thriving at the time of Julius Caesar and the phrase “Cradle of Western Civilization” is tagged onto several locations at the East end of the Mediterranean (most frequently Greece).
I’m not picking a fight. I am genuinely curious as to what distinction you are making. The Julian calendar was calculated in Europe for a Mediterranean empire from which all of what is now know as Western Civilization derives. The Julian calendar was not in use in any Eastern civilization (as we now see it–but also as they then existed). What distinction are you making?
Rome was the center the known world, to them anyway. I believe it’s more of a religious difference than a geographic one.
Actually, it was pretty much on the western edge of the known world.
Might as well get close to the OP’s question while we’re at it.
You may have noticed that some of our month names, “September”, “October”, “November”, “December” are based on numbers, and that the Romans apparently couldn’t count, since they label the 9th - 12th months as 7th - 10th.
Actually, the year used to begin at the “Ides of March”. Spring, as noted by the OP. February was the last month, which is why it got shortchanged. The Romans moved the start of the year to January, and you will find conflicting statements as to why. But the reasons were political, rather than any physical reason.
Many outlying areas continued to begin the year in March, and most of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire used this convention. You will find many sources that suggest the beginning of the year was moved to January by the Gregorian calendar reform, but that is wrong. Gregorian reform and having the year begin on January were two separate adjustments, which sometimes got conflated when countries adopted both at the same time, or close together.
Like England, which adopted both in 1752. Look up George Washington’s birthday sometime. You may find it given both as a date on the modern calendar, and an “old style” date which is 11 days different and a year earlier. The 11 days is from the Gregorian change (it was 10 days in 1582 - by 1752, they were 11 days apart). The difference in year reflects the year numbering for a date in February on the old system which began in March.
Actually, many earlier cultures didn’t number years over centuries. For their purposes it sufficed to say things like “the fifth year of the reign of King FooFraw IV”.
Oh, and for our modern preoccupation with fixed clocks, you can blame the Benedictine monks, who believed in the discipline of praying at regular, fixed intervals, and started devising clocks for the purpose. You can also blame them for inventing the alarm clock so they could get up and pray in the middle of the night. Some background:
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_12_99.html
When James Burke went over this ground in “Connections”, he mentioned that we have 12 hour clocks because when spring-wound clock mechanisms were invented nobody could produce a spring which would power a clock for a whole day.
You are conflating three separate things here yabob. First of all… ides of March occur in the middle of the month… start of spring occurs at the end (often celebrated by our Roman friends on the 25th)… and thirdly there’s the beginning of the month. These all could not stand for the “beginning” of the year.
Roman custom is actually where year beginning with January began… Janis (the namesake of the month) being the god in charge of doors, looking forward (to the new year) and backward (to the old). It is true that the pastoral new year survived for some time after the establishment of the January starting point… but these groups often quarrelled on exactly which day it began on, seeing as how there was no set standard (as alluded to by other posters).
OK, I didn’t mean “spring”, as in Vernal Equinox, precisely. Just that the ides of March were about springtime, and a logical calendar point if you were going to begin around spring. Starting the year in the middle of the month makes more sense when you realize that the Romans didn’t number dates the way we we do:
In fact, they didn’t start years uniformly for all purposes either. Neither do we - when do “fiscal years” start?
Sunrise is highly variable not only because of seasons but also varies with local geography. If you live on the west side of a mountain range, you’ll see it later than someone a few miles away.
But the new year doesn’t begin in mid winter it begins mid summer… oh, were you just talking about your half of the world? 
The year doesn’t begin in the middle of winter, nor does it begin in the middle of summer, since that date is ca December 21, a mere 10 days before the new year.
So in 1762 there was a disparity of 11 days between the old and new calendars. Does any one know what it is now?