issue 2 | page 7 6. january 2008 AD
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New Years Celebrations
A History of the Calendars



Image Source: mamarocks.com

A Happy New Year to all in this coming year for 2008.

Unlike what we know today the New Year was much different in the medieval age with many different dates throughout history.
This article will attempt to describe the New Year Tradition and how it has changed over the years.

New Year's Celebrations

The New Year is an event that happens when a culture celebrates the end of one year and the beginning of the next year.
All cultures that observe yearly calendars celebrate the tradition.

These Calendars have changed over many years however with the earliest believed to be the Roman Calendar..
Although many cultures also had their own versions of the Calendars.

Roman Calendar

The ancient Roman calendar had only ten months and started the year on 1 March, and some minor calendars in different cultures still begin the new year in March, although on different dates.

These 10 months totalled to only 304 days in a year; with Winter been considered "Monthless" since it came at different months each year.

Around 713 BC it was believed the months of Januarius (January) and Februarius (February) were created, and added to the calendar by King Numa Pompilius, although originally as the 11th and 12th month before a reform of the Calendar by Decemvirs around 450 BC.

The introduction of these two months allowed the calendar to equal a standard lunar year (355 days), However Pompilius also added a leap-month, Intercalaris, which had 27 days, beginning after the 23rd or 24th day of Februarius, so that the year was lengthened by a total of 22 days, an intercalary year.

This month was supposed to be inserted every two or three years to align the 355-day common year with the tropical year. However it was often added too late or too early possibly to allow some officials to stay in office longer or force others out early.

These years were usually occurred every second or third year, but were sometimes omitted for much longer, and occasionally occurred in two consecutive years. Because of this too many intercalation years were omitted and the calendar drifted way out of alignment with the tropical year.

Intercalations were often determined quite late, the average Roman citizen often did not know the date, particularly if he were some distance from the city. For these reasons, the last years of the roman calendar were later known as "years of confusion".

Intercalaris was later removed following the introduction of the Julius Calendar.

Julius Calendar

The Julian calendar was a reform of the Roman calendar which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and came into force in 45 BC.

The reform was intended to correct the problem of Intercalations permanently, by creating a calendar that remained aligned to the sun without any human intervention.

The problems became particularly acute during the years of Julius Caesar's term in office before the reform, 63 to 46 BC, when there were only five intercalary months, whereas there should have been eight, and none at all during the five Roman years before 46 BC.

However to properly commence this reform the calendar had to be realigned to make January 1st the start of the Tropical year. To do this 46 BC had to be made a total of 445 days long compensating for the problems during the years of confusion.

When the reform was decreed by Caesar, he added 67 more days to the year by inserting two extraordinary intercalary months between November and December. These months were called Intercalaris Prior and Intercalaris Posterior.

Because 46 BC was the last of a series of irregular years, this extra-long year was, and is, referred to as the "last year of confusion".
The first year of operation of the new calendar was 45 BC and the months of Intercalaris, Intercalaris Prior and Intercalaris Posterior were removed from the Calendar.

To then permanently solve the problem of keeping the calendar in tune with the Tropical Year 10 days were added to the regular Roman Calendar to make a regular Julian Calendar of 365 days, with one additional day in February during Intercalary years ("leap years")

Two extra days were added to January, August and December, and one extra day was added to April, June, September and November, setting the lengths of the months to the values they still hold today.


Graph depicting the Roman names of Months, and the amount of days in each month before & after the reform to the Julian Calender.

Months Days before 45 BC

Days after 45 BC

Ianuarius 29 31
Februarius 28 (23/24) 28 (29)
Martius 31 31
Aprilis 29 30
Maius 31 31
Iunius 29 30
Quintilis (Iulius) 31 31
Sextilis (Augustus) 29 30
September 29 30
October 31 31
November 29 30
December 29 31
Intercalaris (27) (abolished)
Intercalaris Prior (Unknown) (abolished)
Intercalaris Posterior (Unknown) (abolished)

Gregorian Calendar

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. It is a reform of the Julian calendar, first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 by papal bull Inter gravissimas.

The changes made by Gregory also corrected the drift in the civil calendar which arose because the mean Julian calendar year was slightly too long causing the date of which Easter was been celebrated to slowly drift forward in relation to the Calendar, and seasons.

The Gregorian calendar system dealt with this problem by dropping 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronization with the seasons, and adopting the following leap year rule:

Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100;
The centurial years that are exactly divisible by 400 are still leap years. For example, the year 1900 is not a leap year; the year 2000 is a leap year

In the Julian calendar, all years exactly divisible by 4 were leap years.

The Gregorian solar calendar is an arithmetical calendar. It counts days as the basic unit of time, grouping them into years of 365 or 366 days.
The solar calendar repeats completely every 146,097 days, which fill 400 years, and which also happens to be 20,871 seven-day weeks. Of these 400 years;
303 - the "common years" - have 365 days,
and 97 - the leap years - have 366 days.

This gives an average year length of exactly 365.2425 days -
or 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds.

It took many years, over two centauries infact, for a wide array of countries to adopt the Gregorian Calendar with Britain not adapting it until 1752 while it was first adapted in Venice (A region in Northern Italy) in 1522. The last European country to adopt the Gregorian Calendar was Greece, in 1923.

Most Western European countries changed the start of the year to 1 January before they adopted the Gregorian calendar.
For example Scotland changed the start of the Scottish New Year to 1 January in 1600 (this means that 1599 was a short year). England, Ireland and the British colonies changed the start of the year to 1 January in 1752, (so 1751 was a short year with only 282 days).

Following first introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582 and its introduction in Britain on 14 September 1752, there can be considerable confusion between events in continental western Europe and in British domains in English language histories.

For example in 1704, William III of England arrived at Brixham in England on 5 November (Julian calendar), after setting sail from the Netherlands on 11 November (Gregorian calendar).

Under the Julian calendar he would have left the Netherlands on the 31st of October, however the Netherlands adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 so the 31st of October in Britain was the 11th of November in the Netherlands following the synchronization of the calendar.
In fact under the Gregorian Calendar William III would have arrived on the 16th of November.

Months of the Year - English Origins

Another change of the Gregorian Calendar was to change some of the names of the months in the year.
This is a short guide to the origins of each of the names.

• January: Janus (Roman god of gates, doorways, beginnings and endings)
• February: Februus (Etruscan god of death)
• March: Mars (Roman god of war)
• April: Aprilis (Latin for "month of Venus," second month of ancient Roman calendar)
• May: Maia Maiestas (Roman goddess)
• June: Juno (Roman goddess, wife of Jupiter)
• July: Julius Caesar (Roman dictator) (Month was formerly named Quintilis, the fifth month of the calendar of Romulus)
• August: Augustus (first Roman emperor) (month was formerly named Sextilis, the sixth month of Romulus)
• September: septem (Latin for seven, the seventh month of Romulus)
• October: octo (Latin for eight, the eighth month of Romulus)
• November: novem (Latin for nine, the ninth month of Romulus)
• December: decem (Latin for ten, the tenth month of Romulus)

7 Days a Week - English Origins

It has been suggested that a seven day week might derive from early human observation that there are seven celestial objects (the five visible planets plus the Sun and the Moon) which move in the night sky relative to the fixed stars.

Regardless this theory has been unaltered for almost for almost two millennia through both the Julian and Gregorian Calendars, and perhaps much longer.

These days were also given names in the Gregorian Calendar, and here is a basic meaning of the English Origins.

• Monday - moon day (celestial), a modernization of "Monnendaeg"
• Tuesday - Tyr's day (Old Norse god - Tiw in Old English, Teiw in Proto-Germanic)
• Wednesday - Woden's day (Old English god - Norse Odin, German Wotan)
• Thursday - Thor's day (Old Norse god)
• Friday - Frigg's day (Old Norse goddess)
• Saturday - Saturn's day (Roman god)
• Sunday - sun day (celestial), a modernization of "Sunnendaeg"


Primary Information Source: Wikipedia.com

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