“Why isn’t the new year on winter solstice?”

The answer, honestly, is that the Romans had no fucking idea how to run a calendar.

Like, seriously, people notice "OCTOber" and "DECEMber" and say, "hey, those mean 'eight' and 'ten', but they're the 10th and 12th months, what's up with that?".

If you've got a little more history, you'll know that July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar, and think, "oh, they added those two months and bumped the rest of the months back."

Nope. The Romans were way, way worse at calendars than that.

July and August were actually originally Quintilis and Sextilis - the fifth month and the sixth month. They were called this because the year traditionally started in March. So they had Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December.

Martius was named for Mars; Junius was named for Juno. We have no idea what Aprilis and Maius were named after. (No, really.) Then they got lazy and just numbered the months.

@noelle If I recall, not even the Romans were sure where Aprilis came from. It may have come from Aphrodite or "apertus" (to open)

@noelle Doing some research, anecdotally for Maius:

"From the name Māia, daughter of Atlas and mother of Mercury, probably ultimately from a feminine suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s (“great”)."