Humor for the Health of it by 
Joel Weintraub

Happy New Year I get a bit philosophical towards the end of the year. I was interested in knowing why we celebrate the beginning of the New Year with a party, instead of celebrating the New Year at Staples with a new calendar and next year’s stationary. If we feel the need to celebrate the start of the new year, wouldn’t you think we would also want to party at the beginning and end of every month? Can you imagine watching the Ball Drop in Times Square every month? Happy February! Happy March! The months get no special treatment or celebration. Even the end of the week gets special treatment as we all leave work yelling, “Thank God it’s Friday!” But you never see anybody getting excited at the end of the month. It’s not that I think we should be banging pots and pans and setting off fireworks every month, I’m just questioning the exuberance we have for the end of the year. In addition to knowing why we are brimming with so much excitement when it is time to leap from one year to the next, I was also interested in knowing the history of why New Year’s begins on January 1. To begin this story, did you ever wake up on a cold January morning anxiously waiting for the frost to turn to dew with the arrival of March? If you lived in the days when the Romans developed the calendar, you would have gotten your wish. The Romans began their New Year in March, which was celebrated as the Spring Equinox. Equinox is Latin for equal nights and days, which means that the northern and southern hemispheres have equal light. In the Northern hemisphere the days are about to become longer and down below in Australia they are preparing for winter. Now before you get too excited about the Romans beginning the year in March and missing the wintry weather, the Romans decided just to exclude January and February as months. You still would have been complaining about those cold and sometimes snowy days but you would not have been able to complain to a calendar. The calendar stopped in December and did not begin again until March. You still would have paid full price for a 12-month calendar at Staples but you would have only received 10 months. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? The Romans developed the calendar from March to December and then decided to quit. I would love to go to ancestry.com and figure out who their descendants are today because if they are in the home building business, I definitely don’t want them putting an addition on my house in December and deciding that they will get around to the roof in March”.; The Romans even named the first four months of the year after Gods. They even came up with a name that described what was unique to that particular time of year. Since the Romans made it a point that there will be no wars during the New Year celebration, March was named after Mars, the God of War and Agriculture. This was not a bad deal for the God of War. He got to have the night off and they name the first month of the year in his honor. April was derived from Aprilis, which is derived from Aperire, which in Latin means “to open”. This may have been in reference to the opening of the flower buds in spring. Another theory is that April is named after Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. If that is true, then our entire calendar is thrown off since Valentine's Day is in February. The love of your life would be celebrated in February and two months later the Goddess of Love would be celebrated in April. You would think the calendar designers in ancient Rome would just have one month dedicated to love or at least not skip a month of loving. Perhaps more than 30 consecutive days of loving was too much for them and they needed a love break. May was derived from Maius or Maia, who was the Greek fertility Goddess. This makes sense to me since the previous month was dedicated to the Goddess of Love. It does seem a bit rushed though, but back in the Roman Mythology days it must have been important to keep the population growing. Maius was Mercury’s mom and had a reputation as a good mother. It is interesting that May also happens to be the day that we celebrate Mother's Day but this is just a coincidence. Maia is also known as the Goddess of Spring and Growth. June was named after Juno, who was the wife of the God Jupiter. Juno was also the goddess of marriage and childbirth. Coincidentally this is one of the most popular months for weddings. Getting married in June makes a lot of sense since you have already expressed love for your special someone in February, worshipped the Goddess of love Aphrodite in April and heaped praise on Maius, the Greek fertility goddess in May. I’m assuming they ran out of ideas for the next six months. Instead of honoring a God or a description of the season, they just named them five through ten. The fifth month or what we fondly call July was originally called Quintilius, until they changed the name to July, in honor of Julius Caesar and his birthday and for Julius’ fine job in 46 BC of updating what was a formerly chaotic calendar. His month of July was also extended to 31 days. August was originally called Sextillius, for the sixth month, until they changed our warmest month of the year to August for Augustus Caesar. Augustus, who was Julius successor as well as his great nephew and eventually adopted son, got a month named after him after defeating Marc Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC and by also becoming the emperor of Rome. The Roman Senate also wisely decided that August should also have 31 days as did July. That was a smart move. You wouldn’t want anyone thinking that August was an inferior month to July, especially since August was named for your boss who just happened to be the emperor. September was the seventh month and it comes from the old Roman word Septem. October was the eighth month, followed by November for nine and December for the tenth month. The calendar was completed by adding Januarius to the eleventh month or what we call January. Februum or February was added as the last month. January was named after the two-faced god Janus. Calling Janus two-faced was not an attack on his character. The nick name two-faced just indicated that this was the God that could look back to the past and towards the future at the same time. Having this ability to travel back and forth in time is perfect for the month of January, since January is the day that we usually look back to the past and also envision the future. Februm was derived from the word purification. The Purification Festival, also known as the Forgiveness Festival, was when people were forgiven for their past misdeeds, as preparation for spring. They only needed 28 days in February to finish out the year until they realized that once every four years, they needed to add an extra day, which we now call Leap Year. You are most likely wondering how January went from the eleventh month to the first month. Well, whenever they had an election in Rome, the Consul, who had similar duties to a present-day President, would assume office on March 15, which was the beginning of their year. However, in 153 BC, the Consul could not assume office until January 1, which would be 10 months later. So instead of just being late for work by 10 months they just moved the beginning of the year to January 1. That is some power, isn’t it? Can you imagine coming into work on Tuesday instead of Monday morning? Instead of being reprimanded for missing a day of work, the boss just changed the first day of the week to Tuesday. This is why January became the first month. However, New Year's Day was still observed on March 25 well into the Middle Ages. That changed in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII tweaked the Julian calendar and created the modern Gregorian calendar. March 25th was the Feast of the Annunciation when the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would have a baby boy. This was always associated with the first month of the year. With the start of the Gregorian calendar, the New Month was moved from the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th to the Feast of the Circumcision 8 days after the birth of baby Jesus’. There you have it … the history of our modern calendar. In theory, I guess it does not matter which month begins the first of the year. The important thing is that we make the most of every day. Happy New Year! Joel