When most of us speak of “the New Year,” we are generally talking about January 1, the day when our Western civil calendar rolls over from one year to the next. But we know that we live in a world of multiple “new years,” such as the new school year which begins in the autumn, the new liturgical year that starts with the First Sunday of Advent, fiscal years for businesses and NGO’s, and the new year that a wedding anniversary inaugurates.

We also know that, in a diverse country like Canada, many of our neighbours follow religious and cultural calendars that mark various New Years, including the lunar new year (aka the “Chinese New Year”) celebrated by several Asian cultures. Both Islam and Judaism rely, either completely or partially, on a lunar calendar. This results in a year of 354 days — different from the solar calendar many of us in the Western Hemisphere use, which has 365 or 366 days. In Islam, this means that important holy days and seasons gradually “slip backwards” throughout the year, and can occur in any Western month. In Judaism, that variation is “corrected” by the insertion of an occasional “leap month,” which resets the calendar and ensures that important feasts occur, more or less, in the same seasons.
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The Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has decided to move away from the Julian Calendar which will involve changing the dates of several fixed liturgical feasts. For the time being, however, Greek Catholics will continue to celebrate Easter on a later date according to the old calendar.
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