The New Year is not the same for everyone. Even if you are not a believer, you will most likely celebrate as one, just like most people around you do: based on their environment, which is inevitably linked to the religious influences that took part in building the culture of their country.
A brief history of the Occidental Calendar
The first records of celebrations for the arrival of a new year are more than 4,000 years old, in the ancient Mesopotamia region (area that today corresponds to the territories of Iraq, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey). Just like today, the ancient Babylonian peoples celebrated the passage with hope and asked for prosperity, which at that time meant good harvests and plenty of food.
The celebrations took place at the end of March, on the day of the vernal equinox (the day with an equal amount of hours of sunlight and darkness), which marks the end of winter and early spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the time when a new planting season began.
On that occasion they held a large 11-day religious festival called Akitu, which means barley (grain harvested in spring).
It was only in 46 B.C. that the New Year began to be celebrated on January 1st in the old continent, starting the Julian calendar, instituted by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar.
Before Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC), the calendar in Rome was divided into 355 days and 12 months, which caused a great mismatch over time, as the seasons began to occur on different dates. When he became dictator of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar decided to reform the calendar to adapt it to natural time again.
The Gregorian calendar was instituted by the pope Gregorio XIII as a modification to the Julian calendar, carried out in 1582, to adjust the civil year to the solar year, due to the ellipse movement performed by the Earth around the Sun.
The Brazilian New Year
In Brazil, 64,4% (over 123 million ) of its population is estimated to be catholic, (about 42.3 million) declare themselves Protestants (traditional evangelicals, Pentecostals and Neo-Pentecostals); 8.0% (about 15.3 million) declare themselves irreligious: atheists, agnostics, or deists; 2.0% (about 3.8 million) declare themselves to be spiritists; 0.7% (1.4 million) declare themselves Jehovah's Witnesses; 0.3% (588 thousand) declared themselves followers of Afro-Brazilian animism such as Candomblé, the drum of Mina, in addition to Umbanda; 1.6% (3.1 million) declare themselves followers of other religions, such as: Buddhists (243 thousand), Jews (107 thousand), Messianic (103 thousand), esoteric (74 thousand), Spiritualists (62,000), Muslims (35,000) and Hoasqueiros (35,000) according to the census calculated in 2010.
Despite having a current population mostly catholic of 64,4% (over 123 million) , brazilian culture has been built up with a mish-mash of migrants from several different countries, mainly of european and african descent. The mixture result made Brazil use the Gregorian calendar and celebrate the New Year on the last day of december. But still, what really bore their celebrations are rituals from african religions.
Although nowadays, according to the IBGE census calculated in 2010, only 0.3% of brazilian population declared themselves followers of Afro-Brazilian animism, such as Candomblé, Tambor de Mina or Umbanda, this root seems to be as present as all sorts of christianism in the country.
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There is a strong tradition amongst everyone, independent of their declared religion, of hopping over seven sea waves and making offerings (usually flowers) to the goddess of the sea: Iemanjá. She is the Queen of the Sea, an African deity originally from Nigeria, incorporated into Candomblé and Umbanda religions in Brazil.
These two rituals have caused Brazilian people a strong need to spend New Year’s eve by the seaside. A completely illogical feeling for those who are christians or atheists, but still unanimously strong in everyone’s roots.
There have always been rituals to worship the famous goddess around the country. In Salvador, on the 2nd of February, the biggest festival in the country in honour of Iemanjá takes place every year. This celebration is a contemporary institution that has been causing imitations in Rio de Janeiro and Recife.
In the festivity, the faithful walk in white in procession carrying the image of the protective entity of the waters.
Wearing white clothes to New Year's parties became common in Brazil in the 1970s, when members of candomblé began offering gifts to the goddess on Copacabana beach. People who passed by the beach and saw the ritual thought the white was beautiful — and adopted the garment. Nowadays it is so common to wear white far from or near to the sea that some people even do it without understanding exactly why, but some say it’s to bring peace for the coming year.
Want to find out about other new-year rituals? Stay tuned to read the second part of the article next Saturday: The Calendars of The World.
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