March 25 – Old New Year's Day

nPostednon March 25, 2015

Havenyou ever wondered why the year starts in January? And why doesnJanuary start on one particular day rather than any other?

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nI’mnsure you realize that different cultures have created completelyndifferent calendars, with completely different months and differentnNew Year’s Days.

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Of course we know that the idea behind a day – one fullnrotation of the Earth – and a year – one full revolution of thenEarth around the Sun – are based on astronomy…BUT when tonseparate one day from the next (sun up? in the middle of the night?)nis arbitrary – which means that we could divide one day from the other in many different equally-valid ways, and of course different cultures have chosen different division spots, with ancient Jews counting sunset as the mark of a new day, and ancient Egyptians counted sunrise as the mark of a new day. Today, we use midnight as the starting point of the new day – which is usually around the middle of the night in most locales.

nWhen to separate one year from the next isnarbitrary, too.

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nBacknin the old days, before our world was so connected and became son“small,” every culture’s calendar was quite different, and ofncourse they all began on different days. When civilization-straddlingnempires were created, there was a push for the calendars to becomenmore standardized, but it wasn’t until recently (the 1900s) that allncountries used the same standardized calendar (the Gregorianncalendar) for at least official purposes.

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Younknow about Chinese New Year, celebrated in late January or innFebruary—and celebrated in many countries in addition to China. nEthiopian New Year is celebrated on September 11, Nowruz (Persian NewnYear) is celebrated on the vernal equinox (March 20 to 22), and Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) is celebrated in September or October.nMany other local New Year’s Days are celebrated in various places innthe world.

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nFornalmost 600 years, March 25 was celebrated as the first day of thenyear in England. It was the day of the Catholic Feast of thenAnnunciation, and it was sometimes called “Lady Day” (the ladynbeing Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Christian religion). It was anfairly convenient day to start the new year, since it was close tonthe equinox (the start of spring) and farmers had little to do in their fields.

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nInn1752, England and its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar, whichnnamed January 1 as the first day of the year. Also, when the calendarnchange was made, 11 “lost days” had to be removed in order to getnthe calendar back in tune with astronomical reality. For a whilendates were given according to the old calendar AND according to thennew, so “Old Lady Day” was April 6, and “New Lady Day” wasnMarch 25. n

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nSomenremnants of the old system remain, with the United Kingdom’s tax yearnstarting on April 6.

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nThentime of calendar change was very difficult for many. There were manynirregular months because of the removed days—for example, monthsnthat were only 18 days long in the year of the switch-over, or even months that were longer than usual in that year. Some nations had weird one-time-only dates like February 30. To add the confusion, different countries adopted thenGregorian calendar in different years (and even differentncenturies!), so they had to remove fewer or more days than other nations, ranging from removing ten days (as France and Italy did inn1582) to removing 13 days (as Turkey, the last nation to adopt thenmodern calendar, did in 1927). People were uncertain about whether tonchange over their birthdates to the new style or stick with the old.nI have written about the bumps and problems experienced during calendar change several times before:nhere and here and here.

nAlsonon this date: