New Year's story

Тихомиров Андрей Ильич

Other cultures celebrate their traditional or religious New Year according to their customs, usually (though not always) as they use a lunar or lunisolar calendar. Well-known examples include Chinese New Year, Islamic New Year, Tamil New Year (Puthandu) and Jewish New Year. India, Nepal and other countries also celebrate New Year according to their own calendars, which vary according to the Gregorian calendar.

During the Middle Ages in Western Europe, when the Julian calendar was still in use, authorities moved New Year's Day, depending on the region, to one of several other days, including March 1, March 25, Easter (a nomadic holiday), September 1, and December 25 . Since then, many national civil calendars in the Western world and beyond have switched to using one fixed date to celebrate the New Year, January 1 – most of them have done this by adopting the Gregorian calendar.

January 1: First day of the civil year according to the Gregorian calendar used by most countries. Contrary to popular belief in the West, the civil New Year, celebrated on January 1, is not an Orthodox Christian religious holiday. The Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar does not provide for the celebration of the New Year. Although the liturgical calendar begins on September 1, the beginning of a new cycle is also not associated with any special religious rites. However, Orthodox peoples can celebrate the New Year as part of civil holidays. Those who adhere to the Revised Julian calendar (which synchronizes dates with the Gregorian calendar), including Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Romania, Syria and Turkey, observe both religious and civil holidays on January 1. In other countries and localities where Orthodox churches still adhere to the Julian calendar, including Georgia, Israel, Russia, North Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, the civil new year is celebrated on January 1 of the civil calendar, while the same religious holidays are celebrated on January 14 Gregorian (that is, January 1 Julian) in accordance with the liturgical calendar.

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