At a glance
• 1 January is not the world’s new year but the new year of one solar calendar. Purely lunar calendars, lunisolar calendars that reconcile moon and sun, and calendars keyed to the sun’s entry into a zodiac sign each have their own first day.
• Korea’s Seollal is the first day of the first lunisolar month. Pushed aside after the solar calendar was adopted in 1896, it returned as “Folk Day” in 1985, regained the name Seollal in 1989, and became a three-day holiday in 1991. China’s Spring Festival joined UNESCO’s intangible heritage list in December 2024.
• Nowruz falls on the spring equinox (20–21 March), Songkran when the sun enters Aries in mid-April, Rosh Hashanah on 1 Tishrei, the Islamic New Year on 1 Muharram, which arrives about eleven days earlier each year, and Ethiopia’s Enkutatash on 11 September of a thirteen-month calendar.

1. Why There Is More Than One New Year: There Is More Than One Calendar

The reason the world does not say “Happy New Year” on the same day is simple: there is no single calendar fixing the length and start of the year. The Gregorian calendar used as the international standard follows only the sun, and its first day is 1 January. But a purely lunar calendar has a year of 354 or 355 days, about eleven days shorter than the solar year, and a lunisolar calendar inserts a leap month every few years to hold the seasons in place. Add the traditions that begin the year when the sun enters a particular zodiac sign, and at least four different standards for “new year” coexist in the world.

This article uses those standards as its axis to read seven new years: Seollal, the Spring Festival, and Rosh Hashanah on lunisolar calendars; Nowruz at the equinox; Songkran by the zodiac; the Islamic New Year on a purely lunar calendar; and Ethiopia’s new year on a solar calendar with thirteen months. Each shows how a society counts time, and what it is willing to accept to keep its way of counting.

2. New Years That Reconcile Moon and Sun: Seollal, the Spring Festival, Rosh Hashanah

Korea’s Seollal is the first day of the first month of the lunisolar calendar. The National Archives of Korea explains that Seol is “the first day of the first lunar month, meaning the first day of the new year in the sense of ‘a day not yet familiar,’ ‘the strangeness of a new year,’” and describes the day: people rise early, put on new clothes, bow to the elders of the household, and hold ancestral rites, eating seasonal foods such as tteokguk rice-cake soup, doso wine, and sujeonggwa punch. Yet for a century this holiday was pushed out of the national calendar. According to the Archives, “the lunar New Year was replaced by the solar New Year through the adoption of the solar calendar in 1896 and the policy of eradicating national culture under Japanese rule,” and even after liberation the government designated the solar New Year as the public holiday, citing the waste of “double celebration” and the need to keep pace with internationalization. After long debate, “in 1985 the lunar New Year was designated ‘Folk Day,’” and “in 1989 it regained the name ‘Seollal,’ with a three-day holiday system implemented from 1991.” Today’s Seollal holiday is an old tradition and, at the same time, a political decision of 1989.

China’s Spring Festival, which also begins the year on the first day of the first lunisolar month, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 4 December 2024 at the 19th session of the Intergovernmental Committee in Asunción, Paraguay, under the name “Spring Festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of the traditional new year.” The Chinese government’s official portal notes that China now has 44 elements on the list, and describes the practice as including preparations before the new year, staying up on New Year’s Eve, visiting family and friends, activities planned by elders, and festive public events organized by communities.

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, also rests on a lunisolar calendar. According to the Jewish educational site Chabad.org, a Jewish month follows the roughly 29½-day lunar cycle, so it is either 29 days (“missing”) or 30 (“full”); twelve months make 354 days, so “seven times in every 19 years” a thirteenth month is added “so that the lunar-based Jewish year should remain aligned with the solar seasons.” The added month is called Adar I and is inserted before Adar. The new year falls on 1 Tishrei, which, intriguingly, the Torah calls “the first day of the seventh month”: Nissan is ceremonially the first month, but the year begins with Tishrei, two starting points within one calendar.

AI-reconstructed conceptual image of a desk with different calendars and a chart of lunar phases
Recreated illustration · Not an actual photograph — a conceptual image of a desk with different calendars and a chart of lunar phases

3. A New Year That Begins at the Equinox: Nowruz

In Iran, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and beyond, the new year is the day spring begins. The United Nations explains that Nowruz “is celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, usually March 20 or 21,” marking the start of a new year, and that its roots extend “back over 3,000 years to the era of Zoroastrianism.” The UN General Assembly proclaimed 21 March the International Day of Nowruz in 2010 through resolution A/RES/64/253.

On UNESCO’s Representative List, Nowruz was first inscribed in 2009 and extended in 2016, submitted jointly by Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. UNESCO describes it as “a traditional folk spring festival based on the worship of nature, the sun and the universe,” and records practices across roughly two weeks of celebration: lighting two candles to symbolize happiness and abundance, preparing a traditional soup, settling disputes, holding games and sports, enjoying folk music, and wearing new clothes. Nowruz is keyed neither to the moon nor to a zodiac sign but to the position of the sun itself, the astronomical equinox.

AI-reconstructed conceptual image of a spring new-year table set with sprouted greens, candles, and fruit
Recreated illustration · Not an actual photograph — a conceptual image of a spring new-year table set with sprouted greens, candles, and fruit

4. The Day the Sun Enters Aries: Songkran

Thailand’s new year, Songkran, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List in 2023. UNESCO defines Songkran as “the sun’s annual passing into the Aries constellation, the first sign of the Zodiac, which marks the traditional start of the new year,” held in mid-April after the rice harvest. Pouring water is “a significant act during Songkran, symbolizing cleansing, reverence and good fortune”; people bathe sacred Buddha images, splash water on family and friends, pay respect to elders and ancestors, and share folk performances, games, music, and feasts. Participants see the festival as a chance to “symbolically wash away misfortunes, pray for prosperity for the coming year, reunite with family members, and honour ancestors.”

Songkran’s standard is the sun’s position among the constellations. It represents a third sense of time, distinct both from lunisolar new years and from the equinox. UNESCO adds that the tradition is transmitted through family participation, with parents teaching children orally, supported by educational institutions, government agencies, media, and astrologers.

5. A New Year That Arrives Eleven Days Earlier Each Year: 1 Muharram

A purely lunar new year has no fixed place on the solar calendar. As Al Jazeera explains, the Islamic (Hijri) calendar is “approximately 11 days shorter than the solar, Gregorian calendar,” so Islamic dates shift progressively earlier each year. The calendar takes as its epoch the migration, the Hijrah, of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions from Mecca to Medina in 622, an epoch fixed by Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab in 639. “The year has 12 months beginning with Muharram, and ending with Dhul al-Hijjah. Each month starts with the sighting of the new moon.” When the new year begins is determined by methods that vary by country, from astronomical calculation to official moon-sighting ceremonies.

So the Islamic New Year falls in high summer in some years and in spring in others. Rather than tying the new year to a season, the calendar entrusts itself entirely to the moon. Al Jazeera notes that 1 Muharram is not marked with major festivities but is a public holiday in many Muslim-majority countries, and that the first ten days of Muharram, especially Ashura on the tenth, carry particular religious significance for Shia Muslims.

6. A Thirteen-Month Calendar and a September New Year: Ethiopia’s Enkutatash

Ethiopia uses a solar calendar, but not the Gregorian one. A 2019 news release from the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa explains that the Ethiopian calendar comprises “13 Months. While the 12 months have 30 days each, the 13th month named Pagume has regularly five (5) days but changes to six (6) days every leap year.” The new year, Enkutatash, falls on 11 September in the Gregorian calendar, or 12 September in leap years. On 12 September 2019 Ethiopia entered its year 2012, a gap of seven to eight years that arises from a different calculation of the year of the birth of Christ. The name means “the ‘gift of jewels,’” and the same release relays the legend: “King Solomon of Jerusalem gave the Queen of Sheba jewelery during her Historic visit to Jerusalem some 3,000 years ago. Her return to Ethiopia after receiving the gift coincided with the New Year celebration in September, and hence the name Enkutatash came to be.”

Ethiopia shows that even the single word “solar calendar” covers several calendars. With the same year length, a different number of months and a different starting year put the new year on a different day and in a different year.

AI-reconstructed conceptual image of people sprinkling water by a river at dawn to welcome the new year
Recreated illustration · Not an actual photograph — a conceptual image of people sprinkling water by a river at dawn to welcome the new year

7. The Day a Country Moved Its New Year: Japan, 1873

Japan shows how large an event moving the new year is. According to the National Diet Library’s history of the Japanese calendar, the Meiji government decided in 1872 (Meiji 5) to adopt the Gregorian calendar, and “December 3 of the 5th year of Meiji became January 1 of 6th year.” With almost no time to prepare, great confusion prevailed, though modernizers such as Fukuzawa Yukichi championed the change as more rational than the lunisolar calendar that had governed Japanese time for centuries. The same source adds that Japanese calendars today still retain seasonal terms from the old lunisolar tradition. A nation moving its new year wholesale and losing nearly a month of dates overnight is the most dramatic demonstration that a new year is not a fact of nature but a decision of government.

8. Three Things to Remember About Many New Years

First, put the standard in front of the word “new year.” Whether it is a lunisolar new year, an equinox new year, a zodiac new year, or a purely lunar new year determines how the date is set, and knowing the principle explains why the date moves from year to year.

Second, the history of a holiday contains politics. Korea’s Seollal was pushed aside in 1896 and returned in 1989; Japan moved its new year in 1873; the Spring Festival, Songkran, and Nowruz entered international lists in particular years. The traditions are old, but the way a tradition sits on today’s national calendars was largely settled by the political decisions of modern states.

Third, check the date before you send greetings. Knowing in which month a Muslim colleague’s new year falls this year, when a Jewish friend’s Rosh Hashanah is, or what 11 September means to an Ethiopian friend is more than politeness. It is respect for the way another person counts time.

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