FRESH START. Each year the weather turns dreary and in order for communities to lighten the dullness of Mother Nature they celebrate holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa and the New Year — The New Year is a time for optimism, planning and resoluteness — a time to take a moment to prepare for everything that is about to unfold before you in the next 12 months.

Did you know that the first known New Year’s celebrations date back over 4,000 years ago with the ancient Mesopotamians and Babylonians. Their year’s followed the phases of the moon and the new year came about during the vernal equinox — when sunlight and darkness were equally balanced. To this very day, 4,000 years later the moon still plays a very integral part to many cultures’ New Year’s celebrations.

It was the Roman emperor Julius Caesar who developed the Julian calendar which designated Jan. 1 as the start of the new year. Then in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII revised the Julian calendar to become the Gregorian calendar, which many nations of the world still use today, aligning the calendar, not with the moon but rather with the earth’s rotation around the sun — marking 365 days.

Another fun New Year’s fact is that approximately 45% of Americans make a New Year’s resolution — however, nearly 80% of those resolutions made on New Year’s are forgotten by February.

It is a widely known myth that the month of January was named for the Roman god Janus, however it’s name is actually rooted in the Latin word “ianua,” which means door. The name, reportedly, was chosen to symbolize the opening of a new door that coincides with when the new year begins.