The “Fake New Year” Debate and What We’re Actually Arguing About
Every January, the same conversation resurfaces online and this year in particular my algorithm has been filled more than ever with statements like:
January 1st is the fake New Year.
I will be celebrating “the real New Year” in the spring.
We were never meant to start a year in the middle of winter.
The Gregorian calendar ruined our relationship with time and is the reason why we’re so burned out and disconnected.
I understand where this conversation is coming from. Many people feel burnt out, pressured and disconnected from natural rhythms. January can feel heavy, demanding, and out of sync with the body, but I think we’re misplacing the blame.
Instead of asking which New Year is real, it might be more honest to ask what we’re actually reacting to.
1. January Deadlines Are Not The Calendar’s Fault
Let’s start here.
The pressure, urgency, and productivity demands we associate with January are not the fault of the Gregorian calendar nor Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in the 16th century. Calendars do not create economic pressure, they simply organise time. The real issue is how time is used in the world we live in today.
Even if we switched tomorrow to a lunar calendar, a 13-month calendar or a completely different system we would still have work deadlines, financial cycles, rent due dates and productivity expectations. Corporations and institutions would not slow down, they would simply rename the deadlines.
The problem isn’t when the year starts but rather that time has become something to optimise, monetise, and extract value from.
Blaming the calendar is understandable, it’s easier than confronting economic systems, but it doesn’t actually address the root of the pressure people feel in January.
2. “The Real New Year is in Spring” — for whom?
Another thing that often gets overlooked in this debate is geography. Most arguments about the “real” New Year are spoken from a Northern Hemisphere perspective.
In the Northern Hemisphere:
January is winter
April feels like renewal
Spring brings more light and energy
But for half of the world:
January is summer
April is autumn
The winter solstice happens in June, not December
So when we say “humans are meant to start the year in spring,” we’re quietly assuming that everyone lives in the same seasons, which simply isn’t true. There is no universal seasonal reset. Light, temperature, and circadian rhythm changes are local experiences, not shared worldwide at the same time. This is why arguing over a single “correct” New Year doesn’t really make sense once you zoom out.
3. The Winter Solstice is Not Nothing
That said, I don’t think starting the year in winter is inherently wrong for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.
The New Year comes shortly after the winter solstice, a real astronomical turning point. It marks the longest night of the year, the moment when light begins to return. Biologically, this matters. Nature doesn’t rush into spring the moment the light returns; it responds gradually. Humans are built to function the same way.
It’s not the calendar’s fault that our society is structured in a way that rarely allows us to truly rest during winter. That’s why I keep saying: if you can’t make major changes to your life or your job, at the very least, incorporate practices that help relax and reset your nervous system, things like breathwork, yoga, prayer, meditation and many more.
Maybe one date is doing too much work
Perhaps the problem isn’t that January is “fake” or that spring is “real”. Maybe the problem is that we expect one single date to carry reflection, intention, renewal, motivation, action and transformation.
That’s a lot to ask of any nervous system. Human biology is cyclical, not linear. It responds better to multiple moments of re-orientation, not one forced reset.
Instead of fighting over when the New Year should be, we could widen the conversation. We can keep New Year as a civil and organisational marker and also honour equinoxes and solstices as natural turning points. These moments happen everywhere on Earth and are astronomically real for everyone. Personally, I love the idea of celebrating all of them.
4. Could 13 Months Be Better?
I’ve often heard statements like “before the Gregorian calendar we were aligned with the cycles of nature with the 13 month calendar and after the introduction of the Gregorian calendar everything fell apart”. It’s not quite that simple. Let’s look at the reality of how it really went down.
The Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 simply fixed a flaw in the Julian calendar, that was in use since Julius Caesar introduced it in 45 BCE. The Julian calendar assumed a year was 365.25 days, but the solar year is slightly shorter, so over centuries the calendar drifted and seasons slowly shifted. The Gregorian reform corrected this drift to realign the calendar with the sun, equinoxes and solstices.
Before Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar in 45 BCE, Rome used the Roman calendar, a system that evolved over centuries. The original calendar had 10 months beginning in March and ending in December, with the winter period left largely uncounted. The months were Martius (March), Aprilis (April), Maius (May), Junius (June), Quintilis (July), Sextilis (August), September, October, November, and December. Notice that “September” through “December” literally mean the seventh through tenth months. This calendar was irregular and eventually led to the Julian reform.
Throughout history, many societies used calendars that sometimes included 13 months to align lunar cycles with the solar year. The Babylonians tracked 12 lunar months and added an extra month roughly every three years for agriculture and festivals. The Hebrew and Chinese calendars also follow a lunisolar system, inserting a 13th month in leap years to keep holidays and seasons aligned. Ancient Greeks and some other civilizations similarly adjusted their calendars with extra months as needed. These were irregular adjustments to keep months roughly in sync with the sun and moon, not fixed 13-month systems like the modern proposals.
An idea that often comes up in these debates is the 13-month calendar. Proposed in the 20th century by people like Moses B. Cotsworth, it divides the year into 13 months of 28 days each, with one or two extra “Year Days” to align with the solar year.
The concept is mathematically neat: every month has exactly four weeks, making planning, accounting, and scheduling predictable and regular. Some argue that it would align more closely with natural cycles, offering a sense of balance and simplicity that the current 12-month calendar doesn’t provide.
I think it’s an interesting idea, and it could indeed make structuring months easier and more intuitive. But even if we adopted it tomorrow, it wouldn’t magically solve the pressures we feel today. Deadlines, work obligations, financial cycles, and societal expectations wouldn’t disappear, they are tied to how our society functions, not the number of months in a year. The calendar is a tool, not a solution.
What really matters is how we respond as individuals. The way we structure our days, take time to rest, and create space to reset our nervous systems has far more impact on our well-being than the calendar itself. Practices like breathwork, meditation, gentle movement, or simply paying attention to light and seasonal changes can help us align with our own rhythms, no matter what month it is.
With light and love,
Ema