New Year Greeting Cards

January 1st as "the" new year is a fairly recent, and quite arbitrary, agreement. Julius Caesar fixed it in 46 BC, naming the month for Janus, the two-faced Roman god who looks simultaneously backward and forward — an image that still describes December 31st reasonably well. Long before that, the Babylonians ran an 11-day new year festival called Akitu, timed to the March equinox rather than midwinter. The date stuck with the Gregorian calendar's spread, not because it's astronomically meaningful, but because enough of the world eventually adopted the same calendar.

India actually runs on more new year calendars than most countries. Alongside 1 January, the country separately observes Ugadi (Telugu and Kannada new year, March), Gudi Padwa (Maharashtra, March–April), Baisakhi (Punjab, April), Puthandu (Tamil Nadu, April), and Pohela Boishakh (Bengal, April–May) — each tied to a different regional or lunar calendar, each with its own food and rituals. 1 January is the one shared nationally and globally, which is largely why it's become the default for cross-cultural greetings.

Midnight in Indian Cities

Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Goa each run their own version of the countdown — ticketed venue events, open-air concerts, and street gatherings that spill past midnight. At home, the more common version is a family dinner that runs late enough to catch the fireworks together, followed by a round of calls and video messages once the clock turns over.

Why Resolutions Cluster Here

Psychologists call it the "fresh start effect" — people are measurably more likely to commit to a new habit right after a calendar milestone, whether that's a new week, a birthday, or 1 January. The new year just happens to be the biggest and most collectively shared of those markers, which is why gym memberships, diet plans, and "new year, new me" posts spike in the same week every year, even though nothing about the calendar itself changes anything.

Did You Know?

• Not every calendar agrees on when the year starts — the Chinese, Islamic, and several Indian regional calendars each mark their new year on a different date, sometimes months apart from 1 January.
• The Times Square ball drop tradition dates back to 1907, introduced after New York City banned fireworks displays from rooftops for safety reasons.
• "Auld Lang Syne," sung at midnight across much of the English-speaking world, is an 18th-century Scottish poem by Robert Burns set to a folk tune — not an anthem written for New Year at all.

Send Something Better Than a Forward

Millions of identical New Year messages circulate at midnight. A card with your name on it is the easy way to not be one of them — pick a design, personalise it, and share on WhatsApp in under a minute, free.