In Israel the New Year is in the fall, Rosh Hashanah ( It's fascinating to me that many cultures have their New Years at dissimilar times of the year when for my two cents the year begins in the spring when things come back to life) and December 31st is a non- holiday which is called Sylvester. This is weird cause Sylvester was a Christian pope who became a saint in 335. His feast day is 12/31 but apparently, he never left Rome, so I don't get the connection to Israel.
Any theologically-bent know-it-somes, out there?
While I'm on the subject, check out today's Deity of the Day, it's a familiar one and rather amusingly written.
2005 has been quite a long eventful year and makes me think of the Chinese who have a curse: may you always live in interesting times.
(Maybe not as forceful as the Jewish curse: may all your children be like you, but you get the idea.)
So I would like to send out a wish to everyone for health, happiness, love, joy, peace and if it's not to much to ask, little self-actualization for us all. Mwah!!!
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Possibly, Pope Sylvester who became St. Sylvester actually made some decisions that were somewhat anti-semetic. And,he died on Dec. 31st, so......
Could this be "good riddance day" in Israel? Anyway, I'm in WAY over my head here. Bonne Annee, Mes Amis!
Grateful reader, City of angles
New Year's Eve in many central European countries (like Poland and the Czech Republic) is still called Sylvester. So perhaps people just carried on the tradition when they moved to Israel. Also, in Russia, New Year's Eve is the big winter holiday (bigger than Christmas). Maybe the more recent Russian emigres decided to continue celebrating something that for them had a lot of good memories associated with it.
Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Silvester_I, indicates that because December 31 is both the feast day of St. Sylvester and the last day of the Gregorian calendar, the latter is in some countries called "Sylvester."
A posting found at http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002316.html explains that European immigrants to Israel still wanted to celebrate the Gregorian new year as they did in their countries of origin. As you explained, in Israel the new year is celebrated in the fall with Rosh Hashanah, so these immigrants used Sylvester, the Catholic name of the day.
I wonder with which wave of immigrants this began, because it wouldn't seem that this name would be common knowledge to those cloistered in shtetls. I would guess those who brought the practice to Israel were from more urban areas and knew of the name not because of it's Catholic origin.
I tell you, Israel's practice of having a completely different name, Catholic origin aside, beats what we do in the United States, having to qualify it as the Gregorian or secular new year (or a certain someone's bris).
A comment on that post shares something amusing:
I wished all my Catholic friends a "Happy Sylvester" this past year, and the only person who had heard of it or a Saint Sylvester was a Jewish guy who happened to overhear me.
As for the year beginning in the spring: Tu B'Shevat, which can fall between January 16th and February 14th, is the Jewish new year of the trees, when the sap first begin to run a bit prior to actual spring.
I think spring is the logical start of the new year, too. I learned a lot from this post and the comments. I had never heard of New Year's being called Sylvester
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