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Timothée L'Angevin
Published on
Jan 1, 2025 at 7:02 a.m.
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Start the year with a day of rest. What's better to recover from a probably rainy New Year's Eve for many of us. This seems obvious to you, but do you know why January 1st is a holiday?
Since 1810
Please note that this has officially been the case for 214 years. On March 23, 1810, under Napoleon and the 1st Empire, New Year's Day became a public holiday on the advice of the Council of State. It is the first civil holiday to be celebrated (among the five in our calendar, namely January 1, May 1, May 8, July 14 and November 11).
For what ? January 1st being the first day of the Gregorian calendar year, we celebrate the new year. A tradition anchored in the countries which have adopted the Gregorian calendar (almost all of them, with the exception of Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nepal and Vietnam). ).
January 1 was not always the first day of the year
But January 1st is also a religious holiday. As reminded by actu.fr Nadine Cretin, historian of festivals specializing in religious anthropology, the circumcision of Jesus has long been celebrated on this date, i.e. the eighth day from December 25, the date of the Nativity.
“Since the Middle Ages, we have celebrated this event. However, January 1 was not the first day of the year. It was not until 1564 that King Charles IX promulgated this date. »
A celebration abolished in 1974
The feast of the circumcision of Jesus, however, was abolished in 1974, after the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. It was replaced by the feast of “St. Mary, Mother of God”.
As the Catholic Church of France explains, “eight days after the Nativity of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we celebrate his Mother, the one who gave him his human being, his body and his soul through the Holy Spirit who comes on her, placing her in the orbit of divine paternity.
In connection with the Gregorian calendar
At that time, France still operated with the Julian calendar. And it was in 1582 that Pope Gregory XIII generalized the Gregorian calendar to the entire Christian world, including in France, to correct day shifts each year with a new method of calculating leap years, but also to simplify the calendar of religious holidays.
As Nadine Cretin points out, “there were a lot of parties before”.
After the French Revolution (and the repeal of the Republican calendar, Editor's note), Napoleon cleaned up the calendar and removed many religious festivals.
He thus established a public holiday for January 1st. So you know why you have the leisure to rest on this first day of the year.
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