Happy New Year!

There are various times of the year when the “new year” is celebrated… such as the Chinese New Year, the Vietnamese New Year, the Jewish New Year, the Islamic New Year…

New Year is the time at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar’s year count is incremented. In many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner. The New Year of the Gregorian calendar, today in worldwide use, falls on 1 January, as was the case with the Roman calendar. There are numerous calendars that remain in regional use that calculate the New Year differently.

The order of months in the Roman calendar was January to December since King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BC, according to Plutarch and Macrobius. According to Catholic tradition, 1 January is the day of the circumcision of Jesus (on the eighth day from his birth), when the name of Jesus was given to him (Luke 2:21).

It was only relatively recently that 1 January again became the first day of the year in Western culture. Until 1751 in England and Wales (and all British dominions) the new year started on 25 March – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days (the change to 1 January took place in 1600 in Scotland). Since then, 1 January has been the first day of the year. During the Middle Ages several other days were variously taken as the beginning of the calendar year (1 March, 25 March, Easter, 1 September, 25 December In many countries, such as the Czech Republic, Italy and the UK, 1 January is a national holiday.

As someone of Italian descent and who celebrates New Year on January 1 every year (based the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome), I’d like to wish Happy New Year.

2012 has represented a “Big Year” for BDA Books: we’ve published our first author other than me.

I’d like to thank everyone who has supported BDA Books throughout  the past year and thank everyone who supports BDA Books into 2013.

Cheers
Belinda D’Alessandro