The First Month

The gentiles are greatly mistaken in thinking that January is the first month: Moses was right in saying that the Pasch was the first month, for now the herbs in the meadows rise, as it were, from death; likewise the trees begin to bloom, and the first buds appear on the vines. The very air is joyful with this newness of time, a season when the elements of the earth are renewed. Indeed the human race itself is renewed, as the newly baptized throughout the world come to rise in newness of life.

— Chromatius of Aquileia, 4th C.