Whose New Year is January 1st?

By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

January 1st of the Gregorian Calendar has come to be celebrated as New Year Day on the international level, especially in the West, with the misconception arising that it is associated with Prophet Jesus (peace upon him) whom the Christians revere as ‘godson’ – although the Almighty Creator is far too glorious to have the traits of His creatures.

Anyway, the celebrants are felicitated on the start of the year 2024 AD, which is Latin for “Anno Domino” or the “Year of the Lord”.

“The Lord” here means Jesus Son of Mary, but on closer scrutiny, neither the wild parties in the West have anything to do with the Messiah’s message of peace and piety, nor does the 1st, or for that matter any other day of January, has any connection to his birth or the announcement of his mission. This means it is not a Christian year.

January is also not the New Year of the Muslims who follow the lunar calendar based on the auspicious migration from Mecca to Medina of the Almighty’s Last and Greatest Messenger (blessings of God upon him and his immaculate progeny) – fixed on the advice of his Divinely-designated Vicegerent, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS). Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) had migrated 1445 years ago on the first of Rabi al-Awwal, but the second caliph Omar ibn Khattab continued the pre-Islamic practice of starting the New Year on the 1st of Muharram.

Neither has January any significance for any other religion anywhere in the world, such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Shamanism, Animism, etc.

Then whose New Year is it?

Certainly not of the Assyrian Christians, whose Calendar Year starts in April, and is currently the 6,773rd year among the community worldwide. It begins 4,750 years before the Gregorian calendar.

Neither is it of the Egyptians, including the Coptic Christian Church, since in the Land of the River Nile the 11th of September is called the New Egyptian Year and is currently the 6264th Pharaonic Year.

Nor of the Jews, in view of the fact the Talmud, Midrash, and the Kabbalistic text ‘Zohar’, state that the deadline by which their Messiah must appear is 6,000 years from creation. Thus, according to them the current calendar year is 5784 which started in late September.

The Buddhists who are a majority in East and Southeast Asia have their own Calendar Year, that is, 2566, with Thailand starting it on March 28, and China on February 5.

The Calendar Year for the Jain minority of India is 2549 and it starts on 20 October, while the Hindus of India and Nepal have their own Calendar Year which starts in April, and is currently 2075.

As for the Zoroastrians of Iran and their Parsi co-religionists, their current Calendar Year is 2395, and it begins in September on the Autumnal Equinox.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s official solar Hijri Calendar Year is 1402 (in addition to the Islamic lunar Hijri Calendar Year 1445), and it starts on the Spring Equinox or Nourouz – also dated from Prophet Muhammad’s (SAWA) migration, but in accordance with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.

The Aztec New Year, observed as holiday in Mexico, starts on March 12.

Thus, in view of these undeniable facts, none of the religious texts of any creed or their principle figures, including Prophet Jesus, have said anything about the 1st of January.
Then how did it find its way into Christianity? When was it imposed on world countries? What purpose does it serve?

Interesting questions indeed, in view of the sad fact that since last night wild celebrations are underway in most of the world, especially in the West with the oldest sins being committed in the newest ways in the most un-Christian manner, while the US fuels the flames of the Zionist genocide of the people of Gaza!

These depravities, coupled with the diabolical policies of the revelers in the White House and their accomplices around the world, who relish lies, threats, sanctions, torture, wars, bloodshed, occupation, usurpation, state terrorism, ethno-religious discrimination, inhuman measures against immigrants, proliferation of nuclear weapons, economic exploitation and the resulting recession, family disintegration, spread of narcotics, promiscuity, sodomy, lesbianism, blasphemy, and every conceivable crime against humanity, warrant us to open our eyes to the realities of January 1 and the Gregorian New Year on which the height of hypocrisy is evident in the messages released by the self-styled ‘world leaders’.

To begin with, it was in 45 BC that Julius Caesar ordered the change of the Roman calendar from the spring of March to the gloom of winter by fixing January 1 as the start of the New Year in order to commemorate one of his military exploits in honour of Janus, the pagan deity of “beginnings and transitions”; hence the naming of month as January.

The origin of January 1 is thus a celebration of brutal military force in a part of pagan Europe that had resulted in such human misery as massacre of men, rape and enslavement of women, orphaning of children and destruction of towns.

Over three centuries later when Emperor Constantine imposed on the Roman Empire the concept of Trinity – coined by Paul the Hellenized Jew, who had artfully emptied the message of Jesus of its monotheistic contents – the Church Christianized the Julian calendar. It then renamed pagan festivals, such as December 25, the day of wild bacchanal festivities of Dionysius and Mithra, by calling it Christmas. In the subsequent eras, the Church changed the beginning of the New Year to various dates from December to Easter in March-April, and finally to September.

A millennium later in 1582 Pope Gregory after revisions of the Julian Calendar launched a new calendar in his name (Gregorian) on February 24 of that year, but strangely, he neither chose the Spring Equinox nor the Autumnal Equinox, and decided to revert to the pagan practice of January 1 as the New Year.

This is how the wintry gloom of the pagan Roman New Year appeared for the first time among the Christians, although it took several more centuries for January 1 to be accepted as the start of the New Year for most European countries. For instance, the Netherlands adopted the Gregorian or so-called Christian Calendar in 1698; Britain and its colonies including what is now the US in 1752; Russia in 1918, a after the atheist Bolshevik Revolution, and Greece in 1923.

Interestingly, September 2, 1752, is often called the day of the 12-day sleep in British history. That Wednesday night millions in England and the colonies went to sleep and when they woke up the next morning on Thursday, it was the 14th of September instead of September 3.

At any rate, it was only in the 20th century between the Two World Wars that the Gregorian Calendar along with January 1 as New Year Day was forced upon the rest of the world, so that the globe would be held in ransom to the policies of the neo-Roman imperialists in London and Washington, who, while paying lip service to Christianity, hate from the depth of their hearts the Virgin-born Messiah and his monotheistic message of peace, virtue, and social justice.

It is worth noting that none of the Orthodox Churches – Greece, Cyprus, Constantinople (Istanbul), Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), Russia, Armenia, Georgia, etc. – have accepted the Vatican’s imposition of the Gregorian calendar and January 1 as New Year Day.