nowhere in the ancient world was the New Year celebrated at Midwinter, as it is today all over the Christian World. An interesting piece of history about seasonal festivals appears on the site of the Roman New Year (s. site). It tells about a change that had occurred in the Roman calendar: “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 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.”
It is obvious that the sun’s appearance and disappearance is much more important closer to the North Pole than it is further south toward the equator, and that it is more important than the existence of rains. Still, ordinary observation could not mark the point of change of season at Midwinter, as it would of the change between winter and spring. Here is what I read on an Arctic site: “Winter – The darkest time of year at the North Pole is the Winter Solstice, approximately December 21. There has been no sunlight or even twilight since early October. The darkness lasts until the beginning of dawn in early March.”
It is possible that the celebration of the New Year was transferred in Scandinavia, as it was in Rome, from Spring to Midwinter, with the astronomical realization of what was happening to the relation of the earth to the sun at that point; but there is no indication of it in that site, or of its dating if it had happened, as there is in the Roman site. However, it is obvious that in most places around the world, the most important Christian festival celebrated today was unknown in ancient days.