Although I’ve been writing “Have a happy Christmas and a great New Year” in cards this year, I’ve never been sure why “New Year” should have initial caps. A carefully controlled scientific survey of two (Anna and me) indicates 100% of the population don’t know why they use caps for this, but that they do it anyway.
I’m quite sure it could be written “new year”. The question really is over the legitimacy of “New Year”.
I use “new year” but “New Year’s Eve” and “New Year’s Day”, because it’s consistent with Christmas Eve, which would look odd lower case, as would Hallowe’en or Good Friday. But that doesn’t really explain why it’s right, unless you accept consistency as a good enough reason in itself.
See, I think that’s right, and that persuades me to use “new year”. Certainly “New Year’s Eve” and “New Year’s Day” are right because they are actual events, like Hallowe’en (very impressed with the apostrophe, don’t think I’d have remembered that) and Good Friday. New year, though, is more a moment or a vague period. I think you shouldn’t really capitalise that any more than you would capitalise “birthday”, “day” or “next few years”. But lowercasing “new year” is still something I’m a bit reluctant to do in cards. For no very good reason, clearly.
