16/01/2026
𝑱𝒂𝒏𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑭𝒆𝒃𝒓𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒔! They look ancient, permanent, part of the natural order of time itself, but they are the newest months on the calendar. Late additions. Gatecrashers.
The earliest Roman calendar had only ten months, and it ended with December. That isn’t poetic licence; it’s baked into the language. Dec- comes from Latin decem and Greek deka: ten. The months after harvest weren’t named for gods or emperors at all, they were just counted:
September – seven
October – eight
November – nine
December – ten
𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓, 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚, 𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒏’𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕.
The familiar -ber ending in these months likely comes from -bris, an adjectival suffix tied to mensis, meaning month. From the same root we get me**es and menstruation: time measured not by clocks, but by bodies and the Moon.
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒏, 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒖𝒏, 𝒊𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒉
A year belongs to the Sun.
A month belongs to the Moon, the word itself is a linguistic fossil.
One complete lunar cycle (new moon to new moon) lasts 29.53 days. But a solar year, divided neatly into twelve, gives us months averaging 30.44 days. The result? The Moon slips almost a day backward every month. The heavens, it turns out, are terrible at obeying tidy human arithmetic.
The seven-day week also betrays its lunar origins. The Moon’s four principal phases, new, first quarter, full, last quarter, each last roughly seven days (about 7.38 on average), though the exact timing shifts thanks to the Moon’s eccentric orbit. If you’ve ever heard the word barycentre, that gravitational dance is why.
Ancient observers knew none of this. They could see the sky, but they couldn’t yet model it. So the Romans did the practical thing: they counted ten months from the spring equinox, and then panicked when winter refused to fit.
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒎 𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒅
What do you do with the time when nothing grows?
For centuries, Rome wavered, sometimes adding two months, sometimes three, sometimes none at all. Eventually, around 700 BC, two new months were forced into existence: Ianuarius and Februarius.
Even then, March remained the true start of the year. It stayed that way until 153 BC, when the Roman state quietly moved New Year’s Day to January 1. That single bureaucratic decision shoved the months permanently out of alignment with their meanings.
Contrary to popular belief, this had nothing to do with Julius Caesar or Augustus. Quintilis (the fifth month) was renamed July in 44 BC; Sextilis (the sixth) became August in 8 BC. The numerical damage had already been done.
𝑨 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒌𝒊𝒆𝒔
What we use today is a solar calendar with lunar bones showing through, a compromise system where months, weeks, feasts, and festivals come from different celestial logics entirely.
Reconciling this mess defeated scholars for over a millennium, until it was finally corrected, imperfectly, by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Even then, solving the math meant deleting ten days outright. Time itself was edited.
𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓
January 1 was slow to win acceptance.
The Byzantine Empire celebrated New Year on September 1
Much of medieval Europe used March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation)
England and Ireland clung to March 25 well into the modern era
That date still echoes today. Britain’s financial year begins in early April, not by accident, but because ten days were erased during Gregorian reform and simply tacked on.
Ireland, under Protestant English rule, rejected the “Catholic” calendar until 1752. By then, most of Western Europe had already agreed, practically if not officially, that January 1 made the most sense.
𝑨 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒑
This is why history students stumble when they meet a peculiar fact:
The ex*****on of King Charles I is recorded in English parliamentary records as 30 January 1648.
He wasn’t executed early.
The year hadn’t changed yet.
By the calendar of the time, 1648 didn’t end until March 24. Modern historians quietly correct it to 1649, but the original record preserves a world where time itself began in spring, not winter.
So the next time someone says January feels bleak, artificial, or wrong, trust your instincts.
It is a late invention, nailed onto the year to tame a sky that never wanted to be orderly in the first place.
The month of January is named in honour of the god Janus by the Romans who is the god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time. He is usually a two-faced god since he looks to the future and the past. Early Romans believed that the beginning of each day, month and year were sacred to Janus. They thought he opened the gates of heaven at dawn to let out the morning and closed them at dusk. The image here is of a Celtic idol with two faces (Janus form) in Caldragh graveyard on Boa Island in Lower Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh
Photo credit: Jody Halsted, licensed as CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
21274446@N05/" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/21274446@N05/
