Old New Year
January 14 · Level 5 · #1227 of 2238
Old New Year welcomes the year according to the Julian calendar, offering a second, usually quieter celebration. For many people, it is an informal reason to gather with loved ones and keep the festive season going a little longer.
How it is celebrated: friends and relatives exchange greetings and share a meal at home. Some communities also preserve house-to-house songs, wishes for prosperity and seasonal fortune-telling customs.
The apparently contradictory name comes down to calendar arithmetic. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Julian calendar runs 13 days behind the Gregorian one, so its New Year begins on the civil calendar’s 14 January.