COMMENTARY: Janus, this month’s namesake, has two faces for a reason

The Roman god Janus, for which January is named, has two faces. One looks back and the other forward. Janus was the deity in charge of doorways, archways, beginnings and endings. Such a multipurpose god could easily have been chosen to represent any point in time that represents a passage from A to B. So, why did January end up getting the job of starting the New Year?

There are some astronomical reasons for a Jan. 1. The earth is at its perihelion (closest position to the sun) around this time of the year. The winter solstice occurs within three weeks of Jan. 1. But similar criteria could set the New Year during the world’s aphelion (farthest position from the sun) which occurs in June, and the summer solstice in the same month. We could choose the vernal or autumnal equinoxes, when the hours of light and dark are equal. There are cultures that use a lunar calendar, solar phenomena or scriptural dictates for the New Year. But, each of these traditions peg New Year’s to a cycle and not a date.

Five decades before the birth of Christ, the Julian calendar (created by and for Julius Caesar) set Jan. 1 as the start of a new year simply because it was the beginning of the Roman legislative year. During the Medieval Period, the Catholic Church viewed the Jan. 1 celebration as a pagan festival and eventually set the New Year on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25.

It was not until 1570 when Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian with the Gregorian calendar that New Year’s Day was reset at Jan. 1. This also put a tuck in the fabric of time. To accomplish a calendar correction that took back 10 days of seasonal creep caused by the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar used a Papal Bull to simply remove 11 days from the count. The evening of Oct. 4, 1582, most of Europe (England being the chief exception) went to sleep only to wake up the next morning to a date of Oct. 15. Oct. 5-14 simply did not exist that year!

We live in a world that likes scientific, fiscal and legal precision. The practicality of a specific date beginning each year is reinforced by the fact that no matter when a culture enjoys its New Year’s celebration, the dates on the check will all reflect the Gregorian calendar. Fun is fun, but business is business. Thus, Jan. 1, 2024, is the new year for many of the world’s people, all of the world’s legal documents and most of its historians.

But the month of January is not named for a banker, a legislator or an academic. It is named for Janus and his guidance and guardianship of doors, pathways and intersections.

When you think about it, any crossroads, doorway or journey involves a choice of how, when and which direction one takes. The ability to look ahead would be valuable in such places. The ability to look back and see reality instead of a reconstruction matching our wishes and biases would be just as useful. Janus may be pictured with or without a beard, but he always carries a staff in one hand and a key in the other. The staff to lead, the key to guard.

As a mother and grandmother, I always want to guide and guard. I want to use my wisdom (that backward face) to inform those I love of the future that may lie ahead. After all, I have already been where they are going. I know where roads tend to get rough and how pitfalls can appear out of nowhere.

I know that patience is a necessity. That which was made wrong over decades will not be made right in months. Education is neither easy nor painless, but it buys much more than ignorance, which is cheap. Love asks little but respect is a stern taskmaster. Faith in something greater than yourself, whether that be in something spiritual, philosophical or your own powers of scientific reasoning, will hold you firm against the winds of chance. You must find your anchor, but still be willing to set sail.

The new year finds me looking back but using that knowledge to set a course straight ahead into a better year, a better future, and the absolute necessity of keeping the faith.

Louise Butler is a retired educator and published author who lives in Edinburg. She writes for our Board of Contributors.