Early Americans celebrated New Year in March
People once welcomed the New Year in March, the time of the vernal equinox when Mother Earth awoke to spring. Records show the Mesopotamians celebrated the first New Year some 4,000 years ago in mid-March to roughly coincide with the vernal equinox.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/general-discussion/33802-the-tradition-of-new-years-day.html
Other early cultures chose to celebrate the New Year at other times. The ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, while the Greeks chose the winter solstice as the time to start the year anew.
The early Roman calendar designated March 1 as the New Year. The calendar (based on the cycles of the moon — the words moon and month are related) had 10 months, with Quintilis, Sextilis along with September through December as the fifth through 10th months. The names of these months reflected the language's numbers: quinque is Latin for five; sextus is six; septem, seven; octo, eight; novem, nine; and decem, 10.
Around 700 B.C., Numa Pontilius, the second king of Rome, added the months of January and February not to the beginning, but to the end of the calendar. The Romans decided to move New Year's Day from March 1 to Jan. 1 because newly elected Roman consuls — the highest officials in the Roman republic — began serving their one-year tenures on Jan. 1, marking the beginning of the civil year.
In 46 B. C. Julius Caesar introduced a revolutionary calendar based not on the moon, but on the sun. This "Julian" calendar decreed that the New Year would occur on Jan. 1, and within the Roman world, Jan. 1 became the consistently observed start of the New Year.
The medieval church, however, considered the celebration of the New Year on Jan. 1 as pagan. In 567 the Council of Tours abolished that day as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated March 1; on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation and the Church's major feast day closest to the vernal equinox; on Easter Sunday; and even on Christmas Day, Dec. 25.
Finally in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII's "Gregorian" calendar-reform restored Jan. 1 as New Year's Day. Catholic countries like France, Spain and Italy adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately; Protestant countries like Germany and Great Britain followed suit, but only gradually. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire — and their American colonies — still celebrated the New Year in March. After the British adopted the Gregorian calendar, British subjects, including those living in the American colonies, began celebrating New Year's Day on Jan. 1.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=33802
The practice of inaugurating the President of the United States in March, for example, reflected this idea. The Constitution of the United States had established March 4 as Inauguration Day, and presidents from George Washington to Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March. (Exceptions to the rule came with the early deaths of sitting presidents.)
It took an amendment to the Constitution — the 20th to be exact — to change, among other things, the inauguration date to January. On Jan. 20, 1937 Roosevelt took the oath of office for the second of four terms. Finally, Roosevelt broke with tradition; on Jan. 20, 1937, he took oath of office for the second of his four terms. In doing so, Roosevelt helped cement Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory's idea that the New Year begins in January.
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