The world's most universally observed festival, New Year is also its most diverse, with timing, inspiration and celebration differing among countries, cultures and religions. For some, it is an occasion on which to give thanks for another year of survival; for others it's a vantage point from which to look forward to the coming year; while for still others, it is a "thin place" -- a moment when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead flickers and fades.

Sowing or harvest, the phases of the sun or moon, religious festivals and civic events, all have served as the year's pivot -- and though Christmas comes but once a year, the dawn of a new year is celebrated somewhere every month of our 12.

Jan. 1, the date most commonly recognized today, was set by the Julian calendar drawn up in 45 B.C. by order of Julius Caesar. However, it wasn't until the calendrical reform of Pope Gregory XII in 1582 that European countries formally recognized the day as the beginning of the new year. Even then, Protestant countries took longer to come round: Germany in 1700, Britain in 1752. Japan adopted the Western calendar in 1873, and China followed suit in 1912; while among later converts have been Christian countries of the Orthodox Church, including Russia, which subscribed to the Gregorian calendar only in 1923.

Perhaps the dry secular reasoning behind the choice of Jan. 1 (the day when newly elected consuls took up their appointments throughout the Roman Empire) set the desultory tone of much modern-day merrymaking -- bargain-hunting at the sales, or TV specials and day-long sports coverage swept along on a tide of alcohol.

By comparison, countries and cultures that have best maintained their native new year traditions -- among them the colorful lantern festivals of China (late Jan./mid Feb.), the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, or Head of the Year (early/mid Sept.) and India's Diwali, or Festival of Lights (early Nov.) -- are those where the event is not tied to the civil calendar but to the rhythm of natural or spiritual cycles.

The civilization of Babylon (in present-day Iraq) was the first to divide the four seasons as we do today, and a Mesopotamian record of 2,000 B.C. contains the earliest known reference to a new-year festival. The Babylonians quartered the year along the summer and winter solstices, when days are at their longest and shortest respectively, and the autumn and vernal equinoxes, when night and day are of equal duration. The new year was observed at the start of spring (mid-April), with the sighting of the first crescent moon after the vernal equinox.

The druid wisemen of the Celtic peoples in premodern northern Europe produced the most sophisticated cultic interpretation of the solstices, and we still celebrate Samhain (the so-called Witches' or Druid New Year) as Halloween, on Oct. 31. Ghosties and ghoulies today scare only young children, but well into the 20th century people believed that Samhain, which marked the final harvest and the beginning of winter, was a time when the dead walked.

Samhain wasn't only a fearful time; food was left for departed ancestors, as during Japan's o-bon festival in August, while apples were buried by roads as gifts for lost or lonely spirits. Bonfires (actually "bone-fires," as leftover bones from feasting were thrown into them as offerings) were lit, and into them were cast stones bearing people's names -- retrieved the next morning, the stone's condition would indicate a person's fortune for the coming year.

No longer customary in the West, fortunetelling remains a key new-year ritual in many Asian countries. Shortcuts to securing a favorable fortune abound: Chinese smear the lips of their kitchen god with honey, to ensure he carries sweet reports of them back to heaven; Cambodians jostle to secure a paper talisman smeared with the blood of a shaman known as the "Pig God," who cuts his tongue with a razor blade at the start of the ritual; Vietnamese leave a whole chicken on a platter outside their door at midnight to entice the new year, mua xuan, into the house bringing fortune.

More skeptical in the West, people try to improve their lives by making New Year resolutions. Although these may seem the quintessential expression of contemporary self-help culture, they too have Babylonian roots. The most common resolution four millennia ago was to return borrowed farm implements -- setting a practical and realistic level we'd do well to emulate today.

Nowadays, Americans make on average 1.8 resolutions each -- that's upward of 400 million nationwide, or an awful lot of disappointment in store when resolve breaks down. For some, the stress of new-year expectations is all too much. One survey in the mid-1990s that examined U.S. government records of suicides found that although Thanksgiving and Christmas recorded daily rates below the 34-per-million average, New Year's Day saw a jump to 41-per-million -- a statistic made all the sadder because, whatever its particular timing or traditions, New Year has principally been a time for celebrating life itself.