Happy New Year - 1 January

New Year's Day on the solar calendar comes from the calendar issued by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to correct the drift of the Julian calendar used since Roman times. The new calendar kept twelve months and placed the start of the year on 1 January. Over the following centuries it spread from Europe across the world and became the shared calendar of trade, navigation and diplomacy.

The month of January takes its name from Janus, the two-faced Roman god who looks back at the old year and forward to the new. That image still fits the way people greet 1 January today: reviewing and planning, remembering and hoping, all at once.

For centuries the Vietnamese counted their days by the lunar calendar and knew only one New Year, Tết Nguyên đán. The solar calendar arrived with Western merchants and missionaries from the seventeenth century, but only entered daily life in the second half of the nineteenth, when the French colonial administration used the Gregorian calendar in official papers, courts, schools and newspapers in Cochinchina and then across Indochina.

From then on the Vietnamese lived with two calendars: the solar one for work, school and paperwork, the lunar one for death anniversaries, festivals and Tết. The first of January was called the Western New Year to set it apart from the Vietnamese one. French offices and schools closed for the day, while most people waited for Tết to celebrate in earnest.

Only half a year after the Declaration of Independence, on 18 February 1946, President Hồ Chí Minh signed Decree 22c NV/CC setting out the New Year days, historical anniversaries and religious holidays of the young republic. On that list, 1 January was declared a paid day off for civil servants. It was the first document of the Vietnamese state to recognise the solar New Year as an official holiday.

In 1967 the Government Council issued Decision 121-CP on official time and calendar, confirming the solar calendar as the calendar of all state activity and the seventh time zone as the national time. From the 1994 Labour Code through the 2012 and 2019 revisions, New Year's Day has always been the first paid public holiday of the year for workers.

Today Article 112 of the 2019 Labour Code grants workers one day off for New Year's Day. If 1 January falls on a weekly rest day, the day off is moved to the next working day. Anyone who works on the day is paid at least 300 percent of a normal day's wage.

From the early 2000s the night of 31 December in Vietnam gained a character of its own. Hanoi holds a countdown beside Hoàn Kiếm Lake, and Ho Chi Minh City turns Nguyễn Huệ walking street into a giant stage with screens, lights and fireworks as the clock reaches midnight. Da Nang, Hai Phong, Can Tho and many other cities have countdown stages too.

Unlike the solemn, family-centred lunar New Year's Eve, the solar one belongs to youth and the city: friends meet downtown, cafés stay open late and social media fills with year-in-review posts. New year resolutions, from learning a skill to changing jobs, are often written down that same night.

For businesses, 1 January closes the financial year, opens a new planning cycle and brings new rules on pay, insurance and tax into effect. The first week of January therefore often holds the year-end review, the announcement of targets, awards and the schedule for the coming Tết break.

For working people it is a short pause before the busy end of the lunar year. Many use the day off to look back on a year of work, note what they achieved, update their profile and think about the next step. The biggest hiring season of the year begins right after Tết, so preparation that starts in early January always pays off.