Why isn't the solstice New Years Day?

As in, a logical evidenced reason? No.Jesus' birthday was chosen to be on the winter solstice... to make it seem important (Dec. 25th at the time).
Then, later, it was realized that the solstice moved around because the calendar in use was not 365.25 days.When they figured this out, they decided to put together another calendar.
At this time, they decided to keep Jesus' birthday on the same day (Dec. 25th). And make the New Year to be 8 days after.8 days after birth is generally when a Jewish child is circumcised... as Jar posted about.
This is significant as well... to Jews. (Jesus bleeding = "proof" that Jesus was indeed a human).So, the answer is: That's the way the guys in charge at the time decided to make it.
And we keep it because of tradition and pain-in-the-ass to change. Some answers webpage I read that I found really annoying to click throughAnd Merry Christmas!!
I'm on my last day at work, hopefully y'all are already holiday-ing.Edited by Stile, : Adding well-wishes to be polite.

I agree, it's silly.
The "answer" I linked to actually mentioned that when they originally picked Jesus' birthday as the winter solstice it was on December "24/25" ... I don't really know what they mean by that. Something about how it moved around 'cause their calendar wasn't quite correct... But the 24th would work with the "8 days 'till New Year" thing.I don't find any of the answers satisfying. I think adjustments like this, and I'm sure there were many before they even started recording them... are behind the issue in some form.As RAZD said... "bad time keeping."
It's as good an explanation as any I can find. I even worry about those who are absolutely positive that Christ was born at all.My wife read this book recently: Inside Scientology It's amazing to read about how a religion got started in the modern age. The parallels that can be drawn between this religion starting and how any religion could have started (like Christianity) are staggering.Start a religion in an age where record-keeping just isn't done and you don't even have to clean up your "mundane history"... just write whatever one you'd like. It would have been so easy to start a religion at that time, I'm surprised it was done every day. Oh, wait... here's a list of over 9000.

Yes, they certainly do.
I didn't mean recording the date in general I meant recording changes to the calendar system they were using.I'm sure some changes to the calendar were not recorded, as well as some records (even calendars in general) just plain being lost to our knowledge. I agree. Personally, I would have started the calendar on the day Earth's orbit stabalized enough to warrant having a standard calendar.
Unfortunately, I wasn't around when the calendar was created. Also, I don't know exactly when that was.
Perhaps those who created the calendar had similar technological limitations and just picked whatever made sense to them at the time (important religious implications). Yeah. They should have just googled it

I'm not sure I understand the argument precisely.But... if what you say actually does happen... instead of "redefining the second" to correct the anomaly in the rotation of the Earth... couldn't we simply redefine "how long a day is" to be 24 hours (and 1 second)?That way, the time base itself is still the same... it's just that the day has gotten longer... which is actually what's happened physically as well (isn't it?).