Every year at 11:59 P.M. on December 31st, a crystal ball, six feet in diameter and weighing 1,070 pounds, begins its long descent from the top of a tower high over New York’s Times Square. When it reaches the bottom on the stroke of midnight, strangers shake hands, embrace, and wish each other a Happy New Year, before moving on to Central Park for one of the world’s-greatest firework displays.

New York City is in many respects the world’s most assertively modern metropolis, and this typically sensational, deeply commercialized celebration is accompanied by the highest of high-tech effects. But in celebrating the New Year, the city is observing a ritual first recorded in ancient Babylon, 4,000 years ago. The Babylonians’ New Year celebrations went on for eleven days. There was feasting and revelry, and just like us they wished each other luck and made New Year resolutions. In fact, the observance of New Year probably goes back to the moment when human beings first realized that the seasons were a cycle—that the cold and dark of winter holds the promise of spring, and summer, and the mellow nature of fall.

We celebrate New Year in midwinter. The turning point of the natural calendar is the winter solstice, the year’s shortest day, which falls on December 21st. Other cultures, both past and present, have celebrated New Year in early spring. The Babylonians’ New Year began on the first new moon after the vernal equinox—the first day of spring, when day and night are of equal duration. For the Romans, too, it was a spring festival, held in late March. Man-made calendars have always been imperfect, and the Romans were constantly having to adjust theirs to keep it in sync with nature. In 153 B.C., the senate decreed that January 1st would be the New Year (the first January 1st New Year in history), but again the calendar was so out of time with the seasons that when Julius Caesar established a more accurate calendar, the year 46–45 B.C. had to run for 445 days.

Throughout the Celtic and other pagan societies of Northern Europe, the New Year was a winter festival—a time when the spirits of the dead were called to reckoning, and the gods of the underworld had to be appeased before a fresh start could be made. As Christianity spread in Europe, New Year’s Day became part of the longer Christmas celebrations.

Today many older customs linger. In Scotland the first stranger to cross the threshold after midnight on “Hogmanay” is greeted with the same hospitality that their Celtic ancestors offered, to bring luck. The traditional Yule log is the same one the Vikings sat around, and the fireworks over New York and countless other towns and cities throughout the world are a primal assertion of new life against darkness and death. And on millions of holiday greetings cards and advertisements, Old Father Time looks kindly on a new-born child still seen in the frescoes of Ancient Greece. The New Year’s parades, held in Pasadena, California, and other places all over the globe, would not seem strange to our ancient ancestors, who carried branches of fir and holly, and sprigs of mistletoe as they strode into the New Year, and into the future.