Noëlle the 8-Bit🏳️🌈🎄
“Why isn’t the new year on winter solstice?”
The answer, honestly, is that the Romans had no fucking idea how to run a calendar.
Like, seriously, people notice "OCTOber" and "DECEMber" and say, "hey, those mean 'eight' and 'ten', but they're the 10th and 12th months, what's up with that?".
If you've got a little more history, you'll know that July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar, and think, "oh, they added those two months and bumped the rest of the months back."
Nope. The Romans were way, way worse at calendars than that.
July and August were actually originally Quintilis and Sextilis - the fifth month and the sixth month. They were called this because the year traditionally started in March. So they had Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December.
Martius was named for Mars; Junius was named for Juno. We have no idea what Aprilis and Maius were named after. (No, really.) Then they got lazy and just numbered the months.
"But wait," you ask, "what about January and February?" Hold onto your butts, because calling the months by their numbers? Not even close to the laziest the Roman calendar got.
Between the end of December and the beginning of Martius were 50-odd intercalary days. They didn't HAVE months associated with them. They were just sort of there.
I swear I am not making this up.
@noelle
Were those intercalary days associated with particular gods or festivals, or was it just "huddle around the fireplace" time?
@DialMforMara there were a lot of festivals and holidays in the intercalary months, but mostly they just boiled down to "the ancient Romans really liked the number ten".