??• .VEW  YORK CITY.                   12;',
 

CHAPTER XIV.

When and where originated New Year's celebrations
IS partly a mystery. What day Adam and his wife
kept as the anniversary of their New Year's day we
have no record to show. Each of us has two birthdays ;
one ours, the other Adam's, or New Year's Day. When
the months were named, at a later period, January got
its name from Janus, whose festival was celebrated on the
first day of by the Romans. Janus was, also, two-
faced — he could look before and behind. Some pro¬
found man, like Abraham Lincoln, asserts that it is de¬
rived from janua, a door, because it opens the year, and
IS therefore called its portal.

In the Monthly Miscellany, printed in December,
1692 (the- very year that William Bradford, whose
bones lie in Trinity yard, printed the first book in New
York city as the King's printer), there is an essay on
New Year's gifts. It states that " the Romans were
great observers of the custom of New Year's presents,
even when their year consisted only of ten months of
thirty-six days each, and began in March. Also, when
January and February were added by the Emperor
Numa to the ten others, the calends (or the first of
January) was the time on which they made presents.
And Romulus, the  founder of Rome, made an order