New Year festivals Definition, History, Traditions, & Facts Here is Lunar New Year, Procession Religion, Feriae and Hilaria
What are New Year Festivals?
New Year festivals include all of the many observances worldwide that celebrate the beginning of a new year. They do not take place simultaneously as different calendar systems. Such as the Gregorian calendar, ancient Greek lunar calendar, and Jewish religious calendar. All mark the new year on different dates. Many New Year festival traditions are centered on New Year’s Eve, which is December 31.
Why does the new year begin on January 1?
The Roman republican calendar and the Julian calendar both recognized January 1 as the beginning of the New Year. The date was chosen partly in honor of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and the month’s namesake. Though medieval Christians attempted to replace January 1 with more religiously significant dates, Pope Gregory XIII created a revised calendar that officially established January 1 as New Year’s Day in 1582. That date was gradually adopted in Europe and beyond; it subsequently spread to countries without dominant Christian traditions.
When is New Year’s Eve?
According to the Gregorian calendar, New Year’s Eve is celebrated on December 31. January 1 marks the beginning of the next calendar year.
How is New Year’s Eve celebrated?
New Year’s Eve is celebrated by gathering with friends and family. Popular rituals include serving food that symbolizes good fortune and making resolutions concerning what one hopes to accomplish in the next year. When the clock strikes 12:00 AM and the new year begins, people may cheer, toast with champagne, kiss loved ones, and, in the West, sing the ballad “Auld Lang Syne.”
Why does a ball drop on New Year’s Eve?
The New Year’s Eve Ball descends from a pole above Times Square in New York City at 11:59 PM on New Year’s Eve. The New Year’s Eve Ball was first used to mark the new year in Times Square in 1907, though the practice of “dropping” balls to signal the passage of time is an older one. One of the most notable examples was install in 1833 at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, dropping daily at 1:00 PM in order to communicate the time to passing ships.
New Year festival, any of the social, cultural, and religious observances worldwide that celebrate the beginning of the new year. Such festivals are among the oldest and the most universally observed.
The earliest known record of a New Year festival dates from about 2000 BCE in Mesopotamia, where in Babylonia the new year (Akitu) began with the new moon after the spring equinox (mid-March) and in Assyria with the new moon nearest the autumn equinox (mid-September). For the Egyptians, Phoenicians, new year festivals and Persians the year began with the autumn equinox (September 21), and for the early Greeks it began with the winter solstice (December 21). On the Roman republican calendar, the year start on March 1, but after 153 BCE the official date was January 1, which was continue in the Julian calendar of 46 BCE.
Lunar New Year
Lunar New Year, Chinese Chunjie, Vietnamese Tet, Korean Solnal, Tibetan Losar, also called Spring Festival, festival typically celebrated in China and other Asian countries that begins with the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends on the first full moon of the lunar calendar, 15 days later. The lunar calendar is based on the cycles of the moon, so the dates of the holiday vary slightly from year to year, beginning sometime between January 21 and February 20 according to Western calendars. Approximately 10 days before the beginning of the new lunar year, houses are thoroughly clean to remove any bad luck that may lingering inside, a custom called “sweeping of the grounds.” Traditionally, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are reserve for family celebrations, including religious ceremonies honouring ancestors.
Also on New Year’s Day, family members receive red envelopes (lai see) containing small amounts of money. Dances and fireworks are prevalent throughout the holidays, culminating in the Lantern Festival. Which is celebrate on the last day of the New Year’s celebrations. On this night colourful lanterns light up the houses, and traditional foods such as yuanxiao sticky rice balls that symbolize family unity. Fagao (prosperity cake), and yusheng raw fish and vegetable salad are serve.
The origins of the Lunar New Year festival are thousands of years old and are steep in legends. One legend is that of Nian, a hideous beast believed to feast on human flesh on New Year’s Day. Because Nian feared the colour red, loud noises, and fire, red paper decorations were paste to doors, lanterns were burned all night, and firecrackers were lit to frighten the beast away.
Adae
The Akan calendar, one year is represent by nine cycles. Following the Akan calendar, according to which each cycle constitutes a period of about 42 days, the Adae festival is celebrate on two occasions in each cycle—Akwasidae, falling on a Sunday, and Awukudae, falling on a Wednesday. Akwasidae and Awukudae festivals are localize, celebrate by every ohene in his community among his people. The final Akwasidae of the Akan year is the Adae Kese (Great Adae), which is a larger celebration and observe more widely.
Akwaside is grander than Audrae
and much of it is celebrate publicly. However, the general public does not participate in the most-important aspect of the festival, which takes place in the nkonuafieso. On the Akwaside morn, each ohene, accompanies by his elders and attendants, lowers his cloth to bare his shoulders and removes his sandals as a sign of humility and respect before the ancestors. Entering the nkonuafieso, he greets the ancestors by calling each of their names, one by one, and offering them libation. The ancestors are then offer a sheep, whose blood is smear on the stools, as well as special foods prepare in their honor. The ohene then sits in state to receive his people. On those sacre days, personal and community disputes as well as important political matters are often address publicly in presence of the ohene.
procession, in Christianity, organized body of people advancing in formal or ceremonial manner as an element of Christian ritual or as a less official expression of popular piety. Public procession religion seems procession religion to have come into vogue soon after the recognition procession religion of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine in the 4th century.
Of the vast number of processions that developed during the Middle Ages, some of the more important still have a place in the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church. They include ordinary procession religion, held on certain yearly festivals throughout the universal church and on other days according to the customs of the local churches, and extraordinary processions, held for special occasions (e.g., to pray for rain or good weather, in time of storm, famine, plague, war, and other disasters). Procession religion other processions characteristic of certain localities, though not regulate so strictly by church and considered non liturgical, play an important part in the religious life of the people; in the United States, for example, May procession religion are sometimes conduct in honor of the Virgin Mary.
The Major Rogation procession (April 25), a penitential observance with the object of obtaining God’s blessing on crops that have been planted, seems to have been adopted from one of the festivals in the pagan calendar of Rome. The Minor Rogations, observed on the three days before the Feast of the Ascension, procession religion date from the 5th century. The procession on Candlemas (February 2), which includes the blessing and carrying of candles, might well be another instance of the church’s subrogating a pagan procession. Another procession with a long history is that celebrated on Palm Sunday, commemorating the triumphant entrance of Christ into Jerusalem.
Hilaria
Feriae
feriae, ancient Roman festival days during which the gods were honour and all business, especially lawsuits, was suspend. Feriae were of two types: feriae private and feriae publice. The feriae private, usually celebrate only by families or individuals, commemorate an event of personal or ancestral importance. Include in this group were the feriae denicales. Or 10 days of mourning observe by a family after the death of one of its members.
The holidays observe by all Romans the feriae public, were of three different types: feriae stative, held annually on a fix date; feriae conceptive, movable festivals celebrate annually on days appoint by priests or magistrates; and feriae imperative, held at official command during extreme emergencies and after great victories.
All feriae public were generally observe by prayers, sacrifices. and visits to temples; in addition, the feriae stative and feriae conceptive usually include feasts. After the official recognition of Christianity, Christian holidays were substitute for the old system of feriae.
Year
year, time require for Earth to travel once around the Sun, about 365 1/4 days. This fractional number makes necessary the periodic intercalation of days in any calendar that is to keep step with seasons. In the Gregorian calendar a common year contains 365 days, and every fourth year (with a few exceptions) is a leap year of 366 days.
In astronomy, several kinds of year are distinguished, having slightly different lengths. The solar year 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds. Also called tropical year, or year of the seasons is the time. Between two successive occurrences of the vernal equinox. The moment when the Sun apparently crosses the celestial equator moving north.
Because of the precession of the equinoxes (an effect of a slow wobble in Earth’s rotation). The solar year is shorter than the sidereal year 365 days 6 hours 9 minutes 10 seconds. Which is the time take by the Sun to return to the same place in its annual apparent journey against the background of the stars. The anomalistic year (365 days 6 hours 13 minutes 53 seconds) is the time between two passages of Earth through perihelion, the point in its orbit nearest the Sun.
A lunar year use in some calendars) of 12 synodic months (12 cycles of lunar phases) is about 354 days long. new year festivals cosmic year is the time need for the solar system to revolve once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
