Why is New Year’s Celebrated in January?

Ever wonder why we celebrate the 'New Year' in the middle the winter? Every other creature on EARTH that goes into hibernation or loses its leaves or flowers in the winter doesn't come back out until the Spring which is usually around the beginning of March. Up until about 45 B.C. most humans on earth did as well, but thanks to the Great Julius Caesar, all of that abruptly changed.

Around 45 B.C. Julius Caesar noticed that the lunar style calendar that was normally followed by the Romans was known to fall out of sync as the years progressed causing authorities to either add or subtract days in the middle of the year in order to stay on track. Some politicians were also known to manipulate the calendar to their own advantages to extend their terms.

Julius Caesar was advised by his scientists to adopt the Solar style calendar that Egyptians had been using. Unlike the Lunar calendar which only accounted for 360 days of year usually, the Solar calendar called for 364.25 days. Caesar decreed that 67 days would be added to the current calendar due to the switch, and every 4 years, an additional day would be added to the February to compensate for the offset, hence the beginning of the first LEAP YEAR!

He also renamed the former 5th month of 'Quintilis' to July after himself since it was now the 7th month, and Sextilis or the sixth month became August after Augustus Caesar since it was now the 8th month. We still uses Sept Oct Nov and Dec for the remaining months even those they are technically numerically mislabeled.

Then in the late 1500's, the Roman Catholic church recalculated the solar cycle and found out that Caesar's calendar ha been off by 11 minutes a year and by then was off a total of 10 days which had to be removed that year. This new calendar was called the Gregorian calendar and is the one we still follow today.

Other cultures like the Chinese and some Jews still follow their own more ancient calendars and holidays, but coincide them to work WITH the Gregorian calendar as well.