Days Until New Year's Day

About New Year's Day

January 1 as the start of the calendar year is a Roman convention formalized under the Julian calendar in 45 BC, when the Roman senate set the year to begin with the month named for Janus, the two-faced god associated with beginnings, doorways, and looking both backward and forward.

It's a public holiday in the overwhelming majority of countries that use the Gregorian calendar civilly, even in places where the primary cultural or religious new year is celebrated on a different date (such as Lunar New Year or the Islamic New Year).

Many other calendar systems mark their own new year on a different date entirely — the Chinese lunisolar new year and the Islamic Hijri new year both move relative to the Gregorian calendar, which is why this site keeps those as separate reference pages rather than folding them into this fixed date.

In Scotland, the New Year celebration known as Hogmanay traditionally extends festivities into January 2, itself a separate public holiday there specifically to allow recovery time not granted elsewhere in the UK.