Today is New Years Day. Various New Year traditions have been celebrated for a long time — the earliest recorded celebration was in about 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, where the new year was celebrated in mid-March, around the time of the vernal equinox. Iranians and Balinese still celebrate the new year with the spring equinox. The Chinese New Year is based around the lunar cycles, and it can fall between late January and late February. In Europe, the Celtic New Year began on November 1st, after the harvest. The first time that New Years Day was celebrated on January 1st was in 45 B.C., when Caesar redid the Roman calendar. He based it on the sun instead of the moon (like the Egyptians), added some days to the year, and declared every January 1st the start of the new year. But Caesar had subtly miscalculated the length of the solar year, and declared an extra day in February every four years, which turned out to be slightly too often, so that by the Middle Ages the calendar was about 10 days off. It wasnt until the 1570s that the calendar was finally refined with leap years in the correct places, and since then, January 1st has been celebrated as New Years Day. Auld Lang Syne has become a classic song for ringing in the New Year. The Scottish poet Robert Burns (books by this author) heard an old man sing Auld Lang Syne in rural Scotland, and he revised it, added verses, and published it as a poem in 1796. He said, There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. But Auld Lang Syne didnt gain prominence as a New Years song until 1929, when the bandleader Guy Lombardo played it at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and it became an American tradition. Locate Guy @:https://youtube/watch?v=A_SrZBlHr2k or just go to You Tube and look up Guy Lombardo at the Roosevelt. All the Best for the New Year! Bob Bennett.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:56:53 +0000
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