Perhaps the most inconspicuous Orthodox holiday is the Church New Year, which in the church calendar is solemnly called the «beginning of the indict» and is celebrated on September 14 (September 1, old style). This date is considered the first day of the new church year.
The last holiday ending the church year is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary — on August 28 (new style), and the first holiday of the new church year — is the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (September 21).
The celebration of the New Year began in September 1363 as a tribute to the civil Byzantine tradition. Since 1492, New Year began to be celebrated in Rus' as a church-state holiday. The meaning of the service on this day was to remember the Savior's sermon in the Nazareth Synagogue, when Jesus Christ said that he had come to heal the brokenhearted«.
But it is also important to note that any «New Year holiday» — is a rather conditional date. Astronomers know that all points in the Earth's orbit are absolutely equal, and it makes absolutely no difference which of them is taken as the starting point. September 1st of the Julian calendar (14th new style) — is the same conditional date. Even the school year in Medieval Rus' began not on September 1, but three months later on December 1 in memory of the Prophet Naum. And the unlucky schoolboy, going to the sexton who taught him by the pot of porridge, imagined his heavy right hand and muttered a rhyming prayer: «Prophet Nahum, guide him to mind».
In both the Roman Empire and Rus', the New Year was celebrated on March 1st. Alexandrian scientists justified this tradition by the fact that God, according to their calculations, completed the creation of the world on the first of March, on Friday, which preceded the day of rest, Saturday.
september 1, which replaced the usual March 1 in Russia in 1363, and in the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 325, — is a tribute to the civil Byzantine tradition. The beginning of the — indict is the beginning of the financial year, the beginning of a new tax collection period. The indict itself — is one-fifteenth of the indiction, a fifteen-year period of time, which under Equal-to-the-Apostles King Constantine established itself as a compromise unit of reference for historical time between year and century.
Some historians believe that the indiction account was introduced by Constantine to replace the pagan Olympiad account, which was finally abolished by Theodosius the Great in 394. Sacred tradition has preserved evidence that the indict and the indiction were introduced into the church calendar as a sign of gratitude to the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor for ending the persecution and declaring religious tolerance.
Another concept of — of the Great Indiction or, as it was called in Rus', the Peace-Building Circle is associated with the concept of indictation and simple indiction. The Great Indiction, unlike the simple, is not an economic quantity. This huge period of time of 532 determines the Easter cycle, and with it the entire church calendar. The creation of the Great Indiction by the fathers of the First Ecumenical Council was, in fact, the churching of the Julian calendar, known since pagan times.
On the day of the church new anniversary, a special prayer service is held in Orthodox churches, in which they thank God for the past year and ask him to bless the new one that has come.
Postcard «September 14 — Church New Year — beginning of the indict»