THE NEW YEAR

Hutt News, Volume 2, Issue 31, 9 January 1930, Page 8

THE NEW YEAR

GREETED FIRST IN N.Z.

New Zealand owing to its longitude and' to the adoption of Summer Time was the first country to welcome the New Year,. an honour shared by Fiji.

Two years ago, when an hour's ' extra daylight was the Dominion's happy lot, New Zealand led the way by thirty minutes in beginning the New Yearj even now no other country saw. 1930 before New Zealand did.

Tliis raises the question as to how the start of a new year is fixed as to where its commencement is located. There is no real reason why 1930 should! begin sooner in one place than in an- X other, or, for that matter, why any day ahould. But ii obviously must be consid- I ered to begin somewhere, and the civilis ed world has agreed that the transition ' ifom one- year to another-^and from one day. to another —shall occur along the 180 th medidian. As a matter of con.*venience certain modifications of this zneridianial line have been agreed upon, the date line being drawn to include is- J lands of one group on^ the same side of i the line, and there are also sight modifications made for political {.mi-poses. Hence, roughly speaking, the year" 1930 fcregan simultaneously at all places along this meridian. The Fijian group ol islands, being practically on this meridian, starts each.year and each dy before any other.place. New Zealand;, without Summer Time would be half an hour later, but"with Summer Time,, in operation, catches up Fiji. Two hours after the Dominion saw the beginning of 1930, Australia experienced it. As the time wave swept round the world it pass ed in succession through China, India, Africa and Europe, until twelve hours after the* Dominion welcomed the birth of 1930, Great Britain woke up to the fact that! the old yeaT was dead and that

new one id begun. But, lor once in a •way, America, was, so to speak, well behind the times, fox it was six hours later before that eohtintent indiulged in its New Year greetings. Last on the list 23$ hours after New Zealand; came the Bairioan celebration.

The whole effort is entirely artificial, and non-Christian races have ..quite other ideas about years and where they start. The Jews for instance, "start theirs in September, and date them from the creation of. the world. Mohammedans have their own system dating from the flight of the Prophet to Mecca and so on. But to a very large proportion of the civilised world and to all British people, January 1 marked the beginning of 1930. - MAKING THE CALENDAR. >» ■ ■ ■ ■ How this date came to be fixed as the first day of the year is not without interest and throws some light on the origin of our present calendar.

In early times, when-.agriculture en-^ gaged the attention of nomadic tribes, the apparent movement of the sun and moon were obviously a good means of fixing the time, but ■-a. year which to us moderns "seems a definite thing, was to them very vagues and intangible. They could not help noting the recurrence of the seasons, but a year to them meant nothing. The Chinese, several thousands of years ago, had definite years in their calendars, but in their splendid isoltion this had no effect whatever on the rest of the world. Later the Greek historians fixed years by referring to definite events which had happened.. So we find Xenophon talking of an event which took place in the year 'when Eubotas of Cyrene won the footrace'at the Olympic Games." That is on a par with the modern New-Zealander who.will refer to 1929 as the year when Concentrate won fjhe Auckland Cup. The Romans went one better and became definite. They adopted a chronology which dated years from the ' founding of the city.'' This system was subsequently superseded by the Christian method of numbering the years from the birth of Christ.

It sounds «asy enough to so elate the years but the difficulties in actual practice have been great. Everyone knows from the perusal of elementary geography books that a year takes to revolve once round the sun, and that it consists of about 365J days. This 365 days, 5 hours 48 minutes 46seconds, how ever, is a most awkward number to deal ■with when it comes to dividing up the year into handy divisions like days, weeks, and months and it has been the cause of much .trouble to calendar makers. The Bomans, to whom we largely.

owe our calendar; began their year in Merely but its arbitrary divisions did not altogether coincide with the revolutions of the earth and the solar and civil year failed to agree. To get, oVer this difficulty discretion was at one time given to the pontiffs to" add or to subtract days. This they did, however, to suit themselves,. adding days so as to prolong their terms of office or subtracting them so a& to shorten a rival's term. Then Julius Caesar of 55 JJ.C. fanie, came ulong and, Mussolini-like," put an. end to "such doubtful practices. It was he who inaugurated' the present. year' of 365J days, keeping the four quarters to make a whole day extra every leap year. In such a mess'did he find the calendar that '.'the-last year of confusion* as it came to-be-called-which was B.C. 47 had : to consist of 445 days in order to put things right. "

THE LAST CALENDAR REVISION

Although Caesar had been fairly accurate in his compilation of what was known as the Juian calendar, it remained for Pope Gregory "XZEEC to undertake a final revision, of the. calendar which

would be acceptable to all. "The new style as it was called, gradualy spread over -Europe, t>ut conservative England would have nought to do with it for 150 years or so. But finally, in 1752, after "years of inconvenience resulting from one calendar in use in Great Britain and another in use in Great Britain and another in Europe,, the Georgian calen" dar was adopted. This necessitated the dropping of eleven whole days" in September of. that year, which was the cause of much rioting and protestation on the part of those who objected to the supposed loss of eleven days out of their lives.

New Year's Day, from the first and second centuries until 1066, had begun either on Christmas Day or else at the* Spring Equinox (March 25). For a hundred years after that, January 1 had a spell as the-initial, day of the year. March 25 being once more favoured! date from 1155 to .1752. Thereafter January 1 held the honour and is likely to continue to do so. Scotland, however, adopted January las New Year's Day in 1600 and to them it is a much more important day than it. is to the average Englishman.