How did the celebration of New Year's Eve begin? Why is the beginning of a year placed in the middle of a dead winter? And where did the many customs surrounding it originate?
MOST people carelessly assume that celebrating New Year's Eve is a Christian custom.

But did the practice of "waiting the old year out" really come from the Bible?
Is January 1 the true beginning of a new year? Who has the AUTHORITY to determine when a new year begins?

An Ancient Pagan Custom

New Year's is one of the oldest and most universal of all pagan TRADITIONS! The custom of celebrating it has remained essentially unchanged for 4,000 years!

"There is scarcely a people, ancient or modern, savage or civilized," writes Theodor H. Gaster, in his definitive book "New Year", "which has not observed it ... in one form or another. Yet no other festival has been celebrated on so many different dates or in so many seemingly different ways."

In ancient Babylon, New Year's festivals were closely bound to the pagan feast called "Christmas" today. The little-known connection of New Year's with Christmas is made clear in our free booklet, "The PLAIN TRUTH About CHRISTMAS!" If you haven't read it before, write for it immediately.
When and how did New Year's celebrations originate? Who began the custom?

Notice the proof of history:

"Mesopotamia," writes Earl W. Count, "is the very ancient Mother of Civilization. Christmas began there, OVER FOUR THOUSAND YEARS AGO, as the festival which renewed the world for another year. The 'twelve days' of Christmas; the bright fires and probably the Yule log; the giving of presents; the carnivals with their floats, their merrymakings and clownings, the mummers who sing and play from house to house; the feastings; the church processions with their lights and song -- all these and more began there centuries before Christ was born. And they celebrated THE ARRIVAL OF A NEW YEAR!" ("4000 Years of Christmas", pp. 20-21.)
That is how it began. The celebration of New Year's began in ancient Babylonia in Mesopotamia. It was a pagan custom of ancient sun-worship 2000 years before the birth of Jesus.
The celebration of New Year's is never once commanded in the Bible. Jesus and the apostles never observed it. Moses forbade it!

Don't say "it doesn't matter." It does matter to God whether we adopt the customs of the heathen. Your Bible says, "Learn not the way of the heathen" (Jeremiah 10:2).