Microsoft has started its New Year’s Sale for the Minecraft Marketplace, offering discounts of up to 75% for 28 items and 33% of 100 items.

The doorbusters will each be on sale for one day, while the rest of the promotions will be available throughout the event, but they will refresh halfway through the sale on December 29.

Hope The New Year Has Started Well For You

The promotion includes a New Year’s 2021 skin pack by Tetrascape, which you can get for free during the sale event.

Startup Life 19 Powerfully Inspiring New Year Quotes to Start 2019 Off Right While the new year is always a time for setting inspiring goals for ourselves, anytime is actually a good time to be.

• Come New Year’s Eve, we’re all looking for a little inspiration for the year ahead (and some tasty New Year’s food, of course). These New Year quotes or caption ideas from celebrities, authors, beloved fictional characters, and other notables might have the power to give us that extra push we need in 2021, particularly after the challenges of 2020.
• January 1 - what a great time to encourage others. A new year, a new beginning, a new start for us all. Ring in the New Year with these wishes and new year greetings for family and friends. Share these wishes with the special people in your life.

The sale will be running for 2 weeks and end on the 4/12/2020. Check it out here.

A move from March to January

A New Year Has Begun Poem

The celebration of the new year on January 1st is a relatively new phenomenon. The earliest recording of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, c. 2000 B.C. and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March. A variety of other dates tied to the seasons were also used by various ancient cultures. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice.

Early Roman Calendar: March 1st Rings in the New Year

The early Roman calendar designated March 1 as the new year. The calendar had just ten months, beginning with March. That the new year once began with the month of March is still reflected in some of the names of the months. September through December, our ninth through twelfth months, were originally positioned as the seventh through tenth months (septem is Latin for 'seven,' octo is 'eight,' novem is 'nine,' and decem is 'ten.'

January Joins the Calendar

The first time the new year was celebrated on January 1st was in Rome in 153 B.C. (In fact, the month of January did not even exist until around 700 B.C., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius, added the months of January and February.) The new year was moved from March to January because that was the beginning of the civil year, the month that the two newly elected Roman consuls—the highest officials in the Roman republic—began their one-year tenure. But this new year date was not always strictly and widely observed, and the new year was still sometimes celebrated on March 1.

Julian Calendar: January 1st Officially Instituted as the New Year

In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar that was a vast improvement on the ancient Roman calendar, which was a lunar system that had become wildly inaccurate over the years. The Julian calendar decreed that the new year would occur with January 1, and within the Roman world, January 1 became the consistently observed start of the new year.

Middle Ages: January 1st Abolished

In medieval Europe, however, the celebrations accompanying the new year were considered pagan and unchristian like, and in 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on Dec. 25, the birth of Jesus; March 1; March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation; and Easter.

Gregorian Calendar: January 1st Restored

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform restored January 1 as new year's day. Although most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately, it was only gradually adopted among Protestant countries. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire —and their American colonies— still celebrated the new year in March.

For more New Year's features see New Year's Traditions and Saying 'Happy New Year!' Around the World.