New Year's Day

In England the New Year hasn't always begun on January 1st. Halloween was the Druids' New Year's Eve festival, so November 1st would have been their New Year. The Anglo Saxons then fixed the beginning of the year to coincide approximately with the sun's rebirth on around December 25th. Then Most of Europe switched their New Year to the beginning of spring. So, for many years, March 25th was New Year's Days.

In fact, most of Europe had been following the Julian calendar, which had been designed under the instructions of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. But this calendar was too long by over 11 minutes a year, and after a number of centuries this amounted to 10 days. So in the 16th century Pope Gregory the 13th had a new calendar designed which revised the concept of leap years and set the beginning of the year to January 1st. Most Europe then adopted this new calendar in around 1582, even though it meant cancelling 10 days.