NEW YEAR. – The feast of New Year brings to a close, among all human groups, a period of time, generally reckoned by the astronomical cycle of the seasons, and opens a new one. It is the concern of the groups that celebrate it to eliminate, as it were officially, through appropriate ceremonies, the past with all its evils, and to begin the new period with rites of good omen. New Year’s festivities therefore have a twofold aspect: they serve both to drive away and expiate the evils committed or suffered during the period just closed, and to augur well for the future, whose veil people seek to lift even through divinatory practices.
Eliminatory rites include: striking every corner of the house with a stick to drive out evil spirits and then casting the stick into a river; discarding from the home all useless or broken objects; making a great noise by striking metal objects, blowing trumpets as in the Jewish New Year (rôs has-šanâh), burning paper effigies representing the spirit of evil; in ancient Rome, driving out with blows of a stick Mamurius Veturius, who represented the Old Mars, that is, the year just past. In Babylon, during the festival of the akîtu, also called zagmuk, a ram was sacrificed; its severed head, after being rubbed against the walls of the temple, was cast into the river together with the body. This was followed by the king’s confession of sins, after he had been stripped of his royal insignia and made to kneel; once he had been reinvested with the insignia, he renewed the sacred store of his royal power by touching the statue of the god Marduk. During the akîtu, this god, who held the tablets of destiny, would determine the fate of the city for the entire year. On the day of the Jewish New Year (rôs has-šanâh), Jewish tradition likewise holds that Jahweh judges the deeds of men and fixes the destiny of each for the whole year.
Augural and divinatory rites: words of good omen, exchange of gifts (among the Romans, strenae, whence “strenas”), kindling of the new fire, propitiatory prayers, and the tasting of foods that symbolize abundance (rice, lentils) or fertility (animals) characterize New Year’s festivities everywhere. Augural rites are often accompanied by divinatory practices, now preserved only in popular tradition, aimed at foreknowledge of the future, especially concerning marriage, the harvest, and death. A widespread custom in Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic northern Europe is to prognosticate the events of the twelve months of the new year by observing those of the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany. The practice of prognosticating from a twelve-day period is very ancient and is also found in Vedic India, where it was believed that the Ribhus, the divine artisans “bestowers of treasures,” remained for twelve days in the house of the Sun and, during that time as genii of the seasons, granted the earth irrigation and flourishing vegetation (Rg Veda, IV, 35, 7). Perhaps the number twelve corresponds to the twelve days that had to be intercalated in India to bring the shorter lunar year into alignment with the solar year.
The Christian year, based on the life of its Founder Jesus, does not coincide with the civil year but begins on the first Sunday of Advent; nonetheless, the Church, adapting itself to civil usage, solemnly gives thanks to God with the singing of the Te Deum for the benefits received in the year that is ending, and on the first day of the new year it invokes His aid with the singing of the Veni Creator (v. Anno, Inizio dell'; CALENDARIO).