Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
To use the 2020 words of the year, this has been one heck of an unprecedented coronavirus pandemic of a year.
While it’s silly to think that a new year will suddenly make everything better, there are good things happening. Several COVID-19 vaccines have been produced and are being distributed throughout the globe. While everything will not magically change today, the light at the end of the tunnel is a little closer.
This year’s celebrations look drastically different than year’s past. We’re unable to gather outside of our home with friends and family while sipping champagne and counting down to midnight. But there are some positives too. You won’t have to pay overpriced admission just to enter your favorite bar, food and drinks won’t be 10x their usual price, and downtown Santa Barbara won’t be overrun with rowdy tourists.
The biggest win of all, there’s no pressure to stay up until midnight. You can turn on the news at 8:45 p.m. and watch for 15 minutes to countdown to midnight, east coast time, and then be fast asleep by 9:00 p.m.
Sticking with our usual tradition of a little holiday history, the earliest recorded festivities date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon, then the Romans until 46 B.C. where emperor Julius Caesar helped create the Julian calendar which closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar of today.
“Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future. Romans celebrated by offering sacrifices to Janus, exchanging gifts with one another, decorating their homes with laurel branches and attending raucous parties. In medieval Europe, Christian leaders temporarily replaced January 1 as the first of the year with days carrying more religious significance, such as December 25 (the anniversary of Jesus’ birth) and March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation); Pope Gregory XIII re-established January 1 as New Year’s Day in 1582,” according to .
Happy New Year edhatters.
