Let New Year bring prosperity for all

January 1, 2017. It is the first day of the New Year. We mostly follow the Gregorian calendar in our daily life although Bangla is our mother tongue. As a result, the Gregorian calendar is an integral part for Bengali nation.

The Gregorian calendar was predominant in the field of education, trade and administration since ancient times. January, the first month of the Gregorian calendar, brings liveliness in the field of education. The academic year of primary and secondary schools begins this month. Students get admitted to the schools. The schools celebrate January 1 as the National Textbook Festival. This day new books are distributed among the students free of cost.
 
The Gregorian calendar is closely related to our daily life. The people of Bangladesh warmly welcome the first day of the New Year following the Gregorian calendar. But the people are getting exposed to the western culture with the changes of time. Now we have been accustomed to the western culture to celebrate the New Year amid enormous celebrations. Especially youths are seen to welcome the New Year on the 31st night by making clamorous festivals. The influence of the western culture is being noticed in the country for almost three decades.

The first time the New Year was celebrated on January 1st was in Rome in 153 B.C. (In fact, the month of January did not even exist until around 700 B.C., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius, added the months of January and February.) But this New Year date was not always strictly and widely observed, and the New Year was still sometimes celebrated on March 1.

In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar that was a vast improvement on the ancient Roman calendar, which was a lunar system that had become wildly inaccurate over the years. The Julian calendar decreed that the New Year would occur with January 1, and within the Roman world, January 1 became the consistently observed start of the New Year.

In medieval Europe, however, the celebrations accompanying the New Year were considered pagan and unchristian like, and in 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the New Year was celebrated on December 25, March 1 and March 25.

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform restored January 1 as New Year`s day. From then on, January 1 is being celebrated as the first day of the New Year.
 
Let the New Year bring joy, happiness, peace and prosperity for all of us. Let envy, conflict, violence and militancy come to an end and Bangladesh go a step forward in the way of development in 2017.

We pay a warm greeting to all of the readers and well wishers of online news portal risingbd.con on the New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year.

risingbd/Dhaka/Jan 1, 2017/Shahnewaj/Amirul