NEW YEAR'S FESTIVALS, no matter on which days potentates or customs arbitrarily decide they fall, tie us inextricably to our ancestors in a shared hope for renewal, regeneration and fresh beginnings. -- PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

Whatever do we mean when we say that? Depending on the context, the greeting can mean different things.

Considered etymologically, 'Happy New Year' can mean 'Lucky New Year'. For 'happy', when it first appeared in Middle English, meant 'lucky', deriving as it did from Old Danish happe, 'to chance'. We don't use 'hap' to mean 'luck' now, but we continue to invoke it unconsciously in a number of other words - besides 'happy', 'happen', 'happenstance', 'haphazard', 'perhaps', 'mishap', 'hapless', etc.

So when we wish people a 'Happy New Year', we might be said to be wishing them a lucky, fortunate, happening - not haphazard or hapless - New Year.

But why 'New Year'? What is so special about a new year? Can't a year be said to be new very day, every moment? So what is unique about Jan 1?

Actually, nothing much. Virtually every culture has New Year's festivals but they occur at all points in the calendar. 'The earliest-known record of a New Year's festival dates from about 2000 BC in Mesopotamia,' according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 'where the year began with the new moon nearest the spring equinox (mid-March; Babylonia) or nearest the autumnal equinox (mid-September; Assyria).'

Ancient Greeks associated the New Year with the winter solstice (Dec 21); Jews with the Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the month of Tishri (Sept 6-Oct 5) in the Hebrew calendar; and Chinese with the first day of the first lunar month, zheng yu� (any day between Jan 21 and Feb 20 in the Gregorian calendar).

Jan 1 as the start of the New Year was a Roman custom, begun some time around 153 BC; before that, the Roman year began on March 1. The Jan 1 date was confirmed by Julius Ceasar when he devised his calendar in 46 BC. Since January (Ianuarius) was named after the Roman god Janus - the god of doors and beginnings who had two faces, one looking forward and the other backward - its first day seemed the logical start for a New Year.

(Incidentally, September, October, November and December ceased to make sense after January was confirmed as the first month in the Julian calendar. 'September' derives from septem, 'seven'; 'October' from octo, 'eight'; 'November' from novem, 'nine'; and December from decem, '10'. These numbers made sense only when March - named after Mars, the god of agriculture before he became the god of war - was the first month.)

Early Christendom accepted Jan 1 as the beginning of the year for a number of reasons. Firstly, it had decided on Dec 25 as the Nativity of Christ. Nobody knows on which day Christ was born, but the early Church chose Dec 25, scholars believe, largely because the day coincided with the birthday of the unconquered sun (natalis solis invicti), the day when the sun begins to show more light during the winter solstice. Because of its association with a pagan festival, Christmas was suppressed in England during the period of the Commonwealth (1640-60) and later in the Puritan New England colonies. The annual so-called 'Christmas debate' that America has can be traced to this fairly ancient quarrel.

And secondly, because Dec 25 was Christ's birthday, the commemoration of his circumcision - traditionally performed on the eighth day after birth - fell conveniently on Jan 1. Thus, the Roman New Year's day became the Christian one too. These coincidences were either fortuitous or the product of brilliant political incorporation of pagan customs on the part of the early Church as it rose to the apex of the Roman empire.

Dionysius Exiguus, the sixth- century monk who gave us BC ('Before Christ') and AD (Anno Domini or 'in the year of the Lord'), used these dates to construct our common calendar. Christ, according to his calculations, was born on Dec 25, 1 BC and the new era began on Jan 1, 1 AD, on the feast of his circumcision. But Dennis the Short (for that is what his name meant literally) got his dates all muddled. Christ, scholars now believe, was probably born before 3 BC. So really 1 AD should have been 4 AD and 2008 should be 2012.

Despite the coincidence of Jan 1 with the Roman New Year, however, most of Christendom switched to March 25 as New Year's day after the fall of the Roman empire. March 25 commemorates the Day of Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel revealed to Mary that she would bear the Son of God, precisely nine months before Dec 25.

Though not the beginning of a month, Christendom celebrated March 25 as marking both the Incarnation as well as New Year's day for centuries, from the early medieval period onwards.

In 1582, this changed, at least for Catholic Europe, when Pope Gregory XIII reformed the Julian calendar and reinstated Jan 1 as New Year's day. Protestant Europe - including Scotland and England, Germany and Denmark - refused to adopt the Gregorian calendar till the 18th century.

England still celebrated New Year's day on March 25 till 1752, when it finally accepted the Gregorian calendar. If it hadn't, the ball would be dropping at New York City's Times Square on March 24, not tomorrow, and Singaporeans wouldn't be enjoying a public holiday the day after.

By such accidents - the whims of popes and kings, the coincidence of Christ's circumcision with the Roman New Year, the fortuitous naming of Ianuarius after the double-faced Janus - was our 'Happy New Year' born.

Does it matter? Not really. Time is new in every moment and any day in the calendar could have served to mark a New Year. New Year's days are among humanity's 'oldest and most universally observed' festivals, the Encyclopedia Britannica tells us, not because they mark any especial recurrent moment in time but because they promise renewal. It is the idea of the 'new' that has drawn humanity since time immemorial to these festivals, not so much the precise day in the year that they occur - Jan 1 or Feb 7 (Chinese New Year in 2008), Sept 6 or Dec 21.

'Make It New' - that quintessential modernist slogan is the essential promise at the heart of every New Year's day. Humanity has celebrated such festivals for more than 4,000 years now, so this wish - for renewal, for restoration, for fresh beginnings - must derive from a deep-seated need that is at once immeasurably old as well as very modern. New Year's festivals, no matter on which days potentates or customs arbitrarily decide they fall, tie us inextricably to our ancestors in a shared hope for regeneration.

Happy New Beginnings!

janadas@sph.com.sg