Guest Posting From Yitz Of Heichal HaNegina - Can Jews Celebrate January 1st As New Year’s ?

From a Google search, found on Mail-Jewish Digest [slightly edited by Yitz]

IMHO, no Jew who calls himself Orthodox, religious, or religiously observant should be celebrating or observing New Year's Day, Rav Moshe's apparent hetter notwithstanding. Aside from the day's debatable direct religious association - if Yeshu was born on Xmas Day (a big if), then New Year's Day was his “bris” - it has all sorts of quasi-religious associations. For example, people wish each other a happy, healthy and prosperous new year, just the way they do before Rosh Hashana, thus investing January 1 with a similar status. Our joining in this, other than as a matter of darchei shalom, denigrates Rosh Hashana. Moreover, the only non-religious association of January 1, particularly New Year's Eve, is drunkenness and general debauchery, values that are, or ought to be, alien to us, with a limited and questionable exception of Purim.

With rare exceptions, New Year’s Eve is celebrated in a manner antithetical to Jewish values, and to the extent it is not, what is being celebrated is not something we ought to celebrate.

If in response to this: For example, people wish each other a happy, healthy and prosperous new year, just the way they do before Rosh Hashana, thus investing January 1 with a similar status.

You will say: The fact is that the world operates on a secular calendar so even observant Jews deal with the secular year . . .

I would like to mention that there is a Halachic opinion (the source eludes me right now) that one may not use numbers to designate the months of the general calendar, but should refer to them by name. The reason for this is as follows:

The Pasuk says, of Chodesh Nissan: "HaChodesh hazeh lachem Rosh Chodashim, rishon hu lachem l’chodshei haShana" - This month is to you a head for all months, a first shall it be to you of the months of the year. Chazal learned from this duplication, that there is an (at least implied) Issur to call a month other than Nisan "The first month" - "Hu rishon, v'ein acher rishon" - [Nisan] is the first, another is not the first. Using a numbering system to denote the general months, even when referring to a month other than January, implicitly defines January as being "the first" - which is not allowed.

The sad fact is that many Jews forget completely about the Jewish dates and run their lives around the goyish calendar. This sometimes borders on the tragic-comic. In many conversations with secular Jews in Israel, my father will ask them: When is Yom Ha'Atzmaut? Roughly 95% of them have no clue! Mind you, this is a National holiday - not a strictly religious one. Could you imagine an American not knowing when is Independence Day? But then, they were never taught that we Jews have a calendar which is older than the general one by about 3700 years, and yet so well regulated that it is still accurate (whereas the general calendar gets "fixed" by some seconds every few years to prevent what happened to the Julian calendar).