January

The Roman calendar that Europe inherited began as a ten month year opening in March, with the span after December left as an unnumbered winter gap. Roman tradition credited the king Numa Pompilius with adding two months to close that gap, and the first of them, Ianuarius, took its name from Janus, the god of doorways, arches and transitions, portrayed with two faces so that he looks into the year behind and the year ahead at once. Ovid opens the Fasti, his verse calendar of the Roman festivals, by asking Janus himself to explain the month, and has the god answer that every beginning belongs to him.

January did not immediately open the civil year everywhere. Roman consuls entered office on the first of January from 153 BCE, which fixed the date as the practical new year of the Roman state, but medieval Christian kingdoms variously began the year at Christmas, at the Annunciation on the twenty fifth of March, or at Easter. England and its colonies only moved New Year's Day back to the first of January in 1752, when they adopted the Gregorian reform, which is why English documents from earlier centuries can carry two year numbers between January and March.

The month's Roman character was largely civic and domestic: the Agonalia of the ninth of January honoured Janus, and the Carmentalia of the eleventh and fifteenth honoured the birth goddess Carmenta. The Kalends of January, when Romans exchanged sweet gifts and well wishes for luck in the opening year, is a recognisable ancestor of the secular New Year customs still kept across the world.

Sources FastiOvid with The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-ReckoningBonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Because the civil year begins in January, the month carries an unusual density of renewal rites. In Japan, Shogatsu brings millions to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in the year's first days for hatsumode, the first shrine visit, with the old year's amulets returned for burning and new ones taken home. Many Protestant churches keep Watch Night on the evening of the thirty first of December, crossing into January in prayer, a practice with deep roots in Methodist and African American congregations.

For Western Christians the sixth of January is the Epiphany, closing the twelve days of Christmas with the visit of the Magi, while Eastern churches keep the same date as Theophany, the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, marked by the great blessing of waters. In Ethiopia the related feast of Timkat follows on the nineteenth of January, when replicas of the Ark are carried in procession to the water. Churches that follow the Julian reckoning celebrate Christmas itself on the seventh of January, a reminder that the month's dates depend on which calendar is doing the counting.

Beyond Christianity, Makar Sankranti on the fourteenth of January is one of the few Hindu festivals fixed by the solar rather than the lunar calendar, marking the sun's entry into Capricorn with river bathing and kite flying, and the Tamil harvest festival of Pongal begins the same day. What January keeps, across all of these, is the older instinct that a threshold in time should be crossed deliberately, with attention to what is being left behind and what is being begun.

Sources Encyclopedia of Shinto (Shinto Jiten)Kokugakuin University with The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and PracticesJulius Lipner