Old New Year
informal traditional holiday, celebrated as the start of the New Year by the Julian calenda in Eastern Europe, Wales (as Hen Galan), Switzerland (as Alter Silvester), etc.
The Old New Year, the Orthodox New Year, also known as Ra's as-Sanah or Ras el-Seni in the Middle East, is an informal traditional holiday, celebrated as the start of the New Year by the Julian calendar. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Old New Year falls on 14 January in the Gregorian calendar.
This traditional dating of the New Year is sometimes commonly called "Orthodox" because it harks back to a time when governments in Russia and Eastern Europe used the Julian calendar, which is still used by some jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church's liturgical year actually begins in September.
In the Middle East, among the Alawites and Middle Eastern Christians, the term Ra's as-Sanah or Ras el-Seni refers to the Old New Year, which is regularly celebrated by these groups.
By country
North Macedonia
The holiday in North Macedonia is known as Old New Year (Macedonian: Стара Нова година, romanized: Stara Nova godina) or as Vasilica (Василица), "St. Basil". Late on 13 January, people gather outside their houses, in the center of their neighborhoods where they start a huge bonfire and drink and eat together. Traditional Macedonian music is sung. For those who stay at home, it is the tradition to eat home-made pita with a coin inside.
The public source identifies “Old New Year” as informal traditional holiday, celebrated as the start of the New Year by the Julian calenda in Eastern Europe, Wales (as Hen Galan), Switzerland (as Alter Silvester), etc. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Year, informal and traditional.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q438198. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old New Year” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.