NEW YEAR'S by Sel.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 39.

NEW YEAR'S.

By Sel.

This festival, like Christmas, may be harmless as a recreation day; but that it is properly the commencement of the year, is to be questioned. The year is naturally divided into four seasons; viz., (1) spring; (2) summer; (3) autumn; (4) winter. How unnatural to begin the year in the middle of the fourth season! The winter seems to be the old age of the year, while the month Abib, or April, is the youth of the year. Abib, or April, signifies the opening flowers. Here, then, is where the year would naturally commence, and this is according to the ancient order. See Ex. 12: 2: "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you."

Men have thought to improve the original plan; and in this, as in many other things, have proved that their own wisdom was folly. And in the language of Scripture we may say, "Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay." Again, we read of those who "put darkness for light, and light for darkness." The wise man says that "God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions."

Some human inventions are comparatively harmless; but when a human institution is put in the place of a divine, as in the case of the Sabbath, making void one of God's commandments, then we must "ask for the old paths, and walk therein."

But in regard to the January festival, the following may be of interest:—

"JANUARY.—This month is named from the Roman god Janus, who was represented with two faces, one toward the old year, and one toward the new. Everybody invoked him on commencing a new undertaking. From the time of Numa, second king of Rome, January began the religious year of the Romans. On its first day was presented to Janus an offering of wine and fruits; his idol was crowned with laurel; the consul or chief magistrate ascended in solemn procession to the capital; and small presents were made to one another by friends. The most usual presents were figs and dates covered with leaf gold. Hence the modern agreeable custom of New Year's presents."—Goodrich's History, p. 364.

"January, the first month in our present calendar, was also the first month in the more recent Roman calendar. It was not the first month in the year in this country till 1752, when the legislature, by an act passed in the preceding year, altered the mode of reckoning time from the Julian to the Gregorian style."—National Cyclopedia.

"It was not uniformly the beginning of the year among the Latin Christian nations till the eighteenth century, the year being in several countries reckoned from March 1, or other dates."—American Cyclopedia.