The Buckets by Greg Cravens for January 01, 2014

Most civilizations DID have their new year start in Spring. The Romans had their New Years Day on March 1 (December means “10th month”), but the start of the year was moved back because of political reasons.

Course it’s FOR something, Eddie!Bowl Games!

Good luck Toby.

You can do whatever you want, Toby.

Just avoid Mum like the plague when you are up to something which is not to her approval.

All the best for 2014 everybody!

xxx

At my house, New Year’s Day has always been for taking down and packing up the Christmas decorations. Making good use of a day off.

I still hate that kid!

New Year’s Day is good for recovering from hangovers….

HAPPY and HEALTHY 2014 TO ALL!

@Neil FIt was the arbitrarily-chosen date that’s exactly nine months before the date arbitrarily chosen as Christmas. Someone was taking the phrase “Anno Domini” entirely literally.

I assume the Chur h had somethinv to do with it. Spring Exquinox sounds so logical.

Part 1 – the calender -The new year started on March 25 under the Julian calender. March 24, 1710 was followed by March 25, 1711. There was an error in the calculation of the Julian calender and by the 1500’s it was off from the seasons.

A revised calender, the Gregorian calender, was invented. This adjusted for the error by a one time correction and changing future century years which were not evenly divisible by 400 to not be leap years. (1700, 1800, 1900 were not leap years, 2000 was.) This was adopted in 1582 by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Protestant churches did not adopt it, especially the Church of England. By the 1700’s they were further off and finally adopted the change in the 1750’s. At that time it was needed to adjust the calender by 11 days. To deal with legal matters birthdays, contract start dates, etc. were changed to the new date even though they occurred before the change. Dates before the change were then marked as o.s. for old style. A person born on April 1, 1710 o.s., would change their birthday to April 12, 1710. Without this change the age of majority, the life of contracts, and other legal matters would be wrong and George Washington’s birthday would be February 11, not the 22. When the change was made to the Gregorian calender the start of the year was moved to 1/1.

The Orthodox church has still not changed their calender and is now off by 3 more days from the one commonly used. That is why Easter, etc. is a different date for them.

Part 2 -

Christmas should be in the spring as historians have traced back when the census that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem for actually was.

It was moved to December to coincide with a pagan winter holiday to override it.

Did you know that the date was also chosen as it makes New year’s day the day of Christ’s bris. (He was Jewish you know.)