New Year

New Year is the time at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count is incremented. In many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner. The New Year of the Gregorian calendar, today in worldwide use, falls on 1 January, as was the case with both the old Roman calendar and the Julian calendar that succeeded it. The order of months was January to December in the Old Roman calendar during the reign of King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BC, according to Plutarch and Macrobius, and has been in continuous use since that time. In many countries, such as the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the United States, 1 January is a national holiday. During the Middle Ages in western Europe, while the Julian calendar was still in use, New Year's Day was variously moved, depending upon locale, to one of several other days, among them: 1 March, 25 March, Easter, 1 September, and 25 December. These New Year's Day changes were generally reversed back to January 1 before or during the various local adoptions of the Gregorian calendar, beginning in 1582.