Is there a scientific reason for New Year happening at this precise time of the year?

Question

Is there a scientific reason to New Year happening at this precise time of the year?
Here in the USA, New Year happens during the winter... And I wonder why. Who knows, for all I know, January 1st could have occurred in the middle of the spring or the middle of the summer.

Is there any scientific reason or is it just a random convention?

Answer 1

No there isn't a scientific reason for the calender at all. In the 1750s in the US (or what became the US) New Years was in March.

There are a couple different things that could be scientific. The Chinese, Islam and the Jews all use a lunar new year (the Chinese is after the winter solstice, the Jew's before, I'm not familiar with the Islamic). These however are all faith or tradition based.

Since a year is just the time it takes the planet to orbit the sun, it doesn't matter where you start or finish. You could say you want it on one of the equinoxes (March 20 or September 21st) or on one of the solstices (June 22nd, or December 21st).

Oddly enough, we have 12 months in a year based on how the moon orbits the earth. For some reason we have a huge opposition to the number 13. 28 (the number of days in the lunar orbit) times 13 is 364. The earth orbits the sun in 365.24 days. We should really have 13 twenty eight day months. ...and then five days off every four years to readjust.

Answer 2

The question might be, whose scientific reason? The start of the year has varied from culture to culture and if our year starts near the beginning of winter, below the equator it is the beginning of summer. That said, winter begins (in the northern hemisphere) soon after December 22, the shortest daylight day. That in fact starts a new solar cycle that takes a year to complete. The calendar was changed (by Pope Gregory) dropping about 15 days to correct for accumulated errors now solved by a leap year formula so we should not quibble about a few days between New Years and the shortest day. It is because of momentum that winter continues to deepen even though each day is getting longer; butt only until the beginning of summer. Perhaps the earliest 'scientists' were astrologers who could predict the seasons, especially when it was time to start or harvest crops. Also it was natural to divide the year into twelve new moons and the word month is a derivative of the word for moon. Even today some believe that the year begins with the first football game (college or professional or both depending on taste). There is no need to begin a year based solely on science.

Answer 3

just an arbitary date choosen