God's New Year begins with the month of Abib (Nisan) in early spring, as set in Exodus 12:1-2. God mentions it only as a calendar marker and never commands a party, countdown, champagne, or kissing. January 1 is a pagan date. It grew out of the Roman Saturnalia, a festival of drunken revelry, gift-giving, and even human sacrifice in honor of Saturn, which ran from mid-December to January 1. Church leaders could not stamp out Saturnalia, so they Christianized it. Medieval Teutonic and Druid customs such as the Yule log and mistletoe were added. Pope Gregory XIII restored the Roman date of January 1 in 1582. January 1 also became a day of persecution against Jews, and New Year's Eve falls on Saint Sylvester Day, named for the pope tied to anti-Jewish laws. Customs like midnight kissing, the old man and baby imagery, the two-faced god Janus, and "lucky" foods carry pagan roots. Today the celebration produces drunkenness, adultery, disease, accidents, and broken relationships. God forbids learning the way of the heathen (Jeremiah 10:2; Leviticus 18:3), and Jesus condemns teaching human commandments as doctrine (Mark 7:7). Because God does not change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8), a Christian veneer such as a watch night service cannot make the day acceptable. Believers must not conform to the world (Romans 12:2) and must come out of Babylon (Revelation 18:1-5).

The celebration of New Year's Eve and New Year's Day carries deep pagan roots, intertwined with ancient customs and rituals that predate modern times. According to historical accounts, the origins of New Year's celebrations can be traced back to Mesopotamia, where festivals marked the renewal of the world for another year, involving merrymaking, feasting, and carnivals. These practices, documented in works like Earl Count's "4,000 Years of Christmas," reveal that such traditions, including the twelve days of festivity and the giving of presents, began centuries before significant religious events, celebrating the arrival of a new year. In ancient Rome, the Saturnalia festival, lasting a week, included drunken revelry, gift-giving, and even human sacrifice in honor of Saturn, with celebrations extending to January 1st. Over time, as cultural shifts occurred, the date of New Year's celebrations varied, with some periods aligning it to March 25 for Germanic spring fertility rites, before being reinstituted to January 1st by Pope Gregory in 1582 through his calendar reforms, which were eventually accepted across much of the Western world. Historical records also reveal a darker side to New Year's Day under certain leaderships, where it became associated with persecution and anti-Semitic actions. For instance, decrees and laws enforced on this day targeted specific communities, mandating forced conversions and confiscations, marking it as a time of oppression rather than celebration in some contexts. Moreover, modern New Year's Eve observances often retain elements of these ancient pagan practices, including excessive drinking and behaviors tied to fertility rites and revelry. Traditional foods believed to bring luck, such as greens, beans, pork, and noodles, are consumed on New Year's Day, reflecting lingering superstitions from earlier times. These customs, alongside midnight kissing and other social rituals, echo the sexual undertones of ancient Saturnalia celebrations. In contrast, God's designated beginning of the year, as conveyed to Moses and Aaron in Exodus 12:1-2, places the first month in what corresponds to Abib or Nisan, aligning with a different seasonal marker. This divine instruction serves as a time marker without any command for celebration or revelry, highlighting a stark difference from the pagan-derived festivities of January 1st.

God established the New Year in Exodus 12:2, where He told Moses, "This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you." This clear definition verse sets the year's start in the month of Abib (later called Nisan), the springtime month when barley reaches the green ear stage. Israel determined it by the new moon coinciding with that stage of the barley crop, and a new moon was delayed a month if the barley would not be ready. Later the Levites calculated the new moons astronomically, verified them by sighting, and the high priest sanctified them. Some passages seem to point to a New Year on Tishri 1 in the autumn, and scholars therefore argue for two simultaneous calendars, a civil year beginning in Tishri and a sacred year beginning in Abib. Each of these indications can be answered. Ezekiel 40:1 does not name the month, and Ezekiel consistently uses the Babylonian spring-year reckoning, so "the head of the year" is the tenth of Abib, making Abib 1 the true rosh hashana. Tabernacles falls at the end of the agricultural year, not of a calendar. Spring is naturally the "return of the year." Israel kept an Abib 1 New Year, whatever surrounding cultures did. Grounded in Exodus 12:2, the Tishri 1 indications fall away, and January 1 as New Year's Day is wholly erroneous.