by Colleen Mart

Created on: December 26, 2009

The history of using a baby to signify the New Year. 

As a new year approaches, we see the symbol of a chubby baby wearing a diaper, sash and sometimes a top hat everywhere.  We recognize this as a depiction of the New Year that is coming, but why do we use this symbol and where did it originate?  Although some people of faith believe it to symbolize the baby Jesus, the origin of this adorable baby is much older than that.  

Approximately 4,000 years ago, the ancient Babylonians celebrated the coming of each new year with a festival that lasted eleven days.   The festivities began when the first New Moon appeared after the vernal equinox.  This was the first day of spring and signified a rebirth of crops and flora.  It was a common tradition for the ancient Babylonians to make promises or resolutions during this time of celebrations and one of the more accepted customs was to return borrowed farm implements. 

As with nearly every past or present culture, the ancient Egyptians also celebrated the coming new year and this is probably the first record of a baby symbolizing the new year.  On the lid of a sarcophagus there was found a depiction of an old beaded man who carries a baby in a basket.  It is believed that ancient Egyptians believed the baby to be a symbol of rebirth, possibly of the sun.  Around 600 B.C. the Greeks also used a baby to symbolize the coming of a new year and would carry an infant through the streets of the cities in a basket.    It was also the festival of Dionysus with exuberant celebrations.   The baby on display signified a rebirth of fertility of crops and just as with the Babylonians and Egyptians the celebrations would appropriately take place in the spring when plant life was coming to life again.  

The Romans also celebrated the coming new year in spring, but the calendar date of the new year was continually changed by various emperors so in 153 B.C. the Roman senate set the date of the new year at January 1.   But this was not a firm date until Julius Caesar deemed it to be the beginning of the new year 107 years later, which gave us the Julian Calendar.  Apparently the tradition of symbolizing the new year with a baby continued into the first centuries after the birth of Christ because the Catholic Church deemed the use of the baby as a symbol of the new year to be pagan and banned it along with the practice of celebrating the coming new year.  It wasn’t until much later, around the fourteenth century, that the Catholic Church incorporated the pagan symbol of the baby new year into a representation of the baby Jesus and started to celebrate the coming new years.

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