We had Auld Lang Syne, fireworks, and drank too much at the changeover from 2025 to 2026. And saw the cheers and joy around the world as 2026 swept in, with hopes for new possibilities this year. Love, money, health and dare one say – peace. It is New Year’s Day as I write this blog and the hope is still there. It seems heresy to say it didn’t have to be January 1 at all. There are 365 days in a year, not counting the odd quarter day. And New Year’s Day could have been any one of them. So why January 1?
A year is the time it takes the earth to do one orbit round the sun. We tend to forget its astronomical nature. Ditto the day, which is the time earth takes to do one revolution. They don’t fit, as the year is 365 ¼ days. The quarter days become the additional day every leap year.
Not quite. As the quarter isn’t exactly a quarter. It’s 11 minutes short. Not a lot, but they mount up. This country was 11 days out by the 18th century, fixed only when we lost 11 days and went on the Gregorian calendar. This was the calendar, devised by the mathematicians of Pope Gregory in 1582. It has the ingenious ruse of dropping a leap year at the beginning of a century when it is not divisible by 400. So 2000 was a leap year but 2100, 2200, 2300 won’t be. The next leap year in the series is 2400 (divisible by 400). And that has put things almost right. So simple, so clever. Though, we will need to make a day’s correction in about the year 3000. Don’t lose any sleep over it.
We finally caught up with the rest of Europe with the Calendar Act of 1750. This moved the official start of the year to January 1st for the British Empire, including the American colonies. Before then New Year’s Day had been March 25. March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation, so a very Christian start to the new year before the Act was passed.
Too bad that Pope Gregory was a Catholic. Due to Protestant prejudice we had resisted any change until we finally swallowed the indignity and aligned ourselves with Europe. That seems almost modern. Our to and froing with our neighbours, pre Brexit, post Brexit.
The act said 11 days in September 1752 would be dropped, to align with the Gregorian system. There were riots over the loss of days as if lives had been shortened. Many landlords insisted on a full month’s rent for that September, although the month was only 19 days, which was all their tenants got paid for. 274 years ago, I am afraid, is too late to put in a claim.
Most countries in the world have accepted the Gregorian calendar with a few exceptions like Ethiopia, though their business and science must align with rest of the world if they are to trade and communicate with their colleagues abroad. The Chinese adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1912 but also have the Chinese calendar running alongside with its own new year.
But why January 1st? The earth’s orbit round the sun doesn’t care which day we choose. It’s a circle (actually an ellipse which is a squashed circle) and where you decide a circle begins and ends is quite arbitrary. Any day could be chosen. What about the summer solstice or the spring or autumn equinox?
No deal. The Church was in charge. January 1st as New Year’s Day was picked to fit in with the 12 days of Christmas which run from December 25 to January 6. The early Church decided Christ’s birth would be celebrated around the Winter Solstice. A sensible fixture to cheer us up at this dark time of the year. Though, there are people who dread Christmas, crushed together with relatives with all the expectation and expense, not counting the estimated 1.8 million people who spent Christmas Day alone in 2025, feeling utterly left out of the jollity. Relate has its busiest month in January, put down to festival strain and new year resolutions. It’s not as happy as all those Santas make out.
On a more cheerful note, this year is the 10 anniversary of the garden, which opened to the public on 12 June 2016. We had spent the year before getting rid of rubbish, copious buddleia, and assorted other plants that had taken over the space, building raised beds and putting in the pond. A major job was getting the container in place. We constructed a wooden external fence, on which a host of volunteers helped paint a mural. Much of it blew down in 2022, and the old one was replaced by the current wire fence.
The garden will be having a big celebration in June with live music, food, and with lots for children. We have six months to make sure it all happens. It’s a good time to celebrate as in 2025 we were given a 10 year lease on the garden by the Council. We’ll be here a while yet.
2026 is my personal anniversary too: 50 years living in Newham. I came to the borough as writer in residence for Soapbox Theatre in 1976. I stayed with them for three years, writing plays and becoming involved in house co-ops. I moved on in 1979 to help set up Page One books in Stratford at The Whole Thing. Surrounded by books, I had a go at my first fiction. I sometimes ponder in the early hours, what would have happened if I hadn’t come to Newham 50 years ago. Who would I be, where would I be? Certainly not writing this blog in that hypothetical scenario. But I am here in time and space. We can only take one path.
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Correction: our 10th anniversary celebration will be on Sunday, 28 June