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.