As the clock prepares to strike midnight on December 31st, marking the transition from 2025 to 2026, millions across the UK will celebrate the start of a new year. But the reason our annual cycle begins on January 1st is a historical quirk rooted in an ancient political and military dilemma.
The March Beginning and the Missing Months
According to historical experts, our modern celebration is a relatively recent development. The year did not always begin on January 1st. In a recent discussion highlighted on social media, science creator Michael Stevens (Vsauce) and mathematician Professor Hannah Fry explored this very topic, noting that the new year once commenced in March.
This system originated with the early Roman calendar, which was only ten months long and ran from March to December. This explains the numerical confusion in several month names we still use today. September, October, November, and December contain the prefixes for seven, eight, nine, and ten, yet are now the ninth through twelfth months—a direct relic of their original positions.
Professor Fry explained that the Romans initially did not formally count the period of deep winter. January and February did not exist in the earliest calendar. Instead, there was a nameless gap of roughly 60 days after December, a time when agriculture halted and there was little need to track dates meticulously.
The Political Crisis That Reshaped Time
The transformation began around 713 BC when the Romans started to account for those winter days, creating the months we now call January and February. Yet, the new year still sprang to life on March 1st. This changed dramatically in 153 BC due to a pressing emergency in Spain.
"In 153 BC, it's all kicking off in Spain," Professor Fry recounted, describing a revolt that required Rome to appoint new consuls—the officials who commanded the army. A strict rule stated new consuls could only be appointed at the start of the year, which was then in March. Facing a crisis and unwilling to wait months, the Roman Senate took a pragmatic shortcut. They moved the beginning of the year to January 1st, aligning it with the start of the consular year, rather than altering the appointment rule.
Months, Myths, and Measuring Winter
A common misconception holds that July and August were added to the calendar to honour Julius Caesar and Augustus. In reality, these months already existed as Quintilis and Sextilis (the fifth and sixth months) and were simply renamed later.
This historical shift also clarifies how Romans managed time before January and February were named. The ten months were a similar length to today's, but the intervening winter period was simply a recognised season. If specific dates needed referencing, they were counted backwards from the "Kalends of March" (March 1st). For instance, the festival Terminalia, now on February 23rd, was known as "VI. Kal. Mart."—the sixth day before the Kalends of March.
So, when you raise a glass as 2026 dawns, you're participating in a tradition set by ancient Roman politicians solving a military logistics problem over two millennia ago. The calendar we follow remains a living artefact of history, its structure shaped by the practical needs of a long-vanished empire.
