I doubted some of what Uncle Ken said about calendar history, but I looked up the Gregorian Calendar on Wiki and found that he was right. I seemed to remember that the Gregorian Calendar wasn't adopted until the 18th Century, but it turned out that was only in the British Empire. It's true that Pope Gregory decreed the adoption of his calendar in 1582, but only the Roman Catholic countries obeyed his decree, and it took some of them several years to do it. The Protestant and non-Christian countries took somewhat longer, with Saudi Arabia being the most recent in 1962. The Brits adopted it in 1750 but, not wanting to give a Catholic Pope credit for it, called it the New Style Calendar.
I also found out that there is no practical need for New Years Day to be on January 1st. Indeed, the Romans originally had it on May 1st, just as I recommended, but not for the same reason:
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