The Christian Church, the Calendar and New Year's Day
Redlands Daily Facts › March 05, 2006
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Summary
Doubtless everyone knows that next Saturday will be New Year's Day, when presumably we should all have adopted fine resolutions for the new year. Fortunately, we professors have devised all sorts of wonderful reasons for putting off the necessity of making those resolutions, because of the fact that Jan. 1 is probably not the first day of the new year at all. This fact will give me lots more time before repenting the errors of my ways.
The recognition of Jan. 1 as the New Year is a relatively recent event.For a great many years, the peoples of the West regarded March 25 as the first day of the year.This was because in the medieval Christian church, this was deemed to be the Annunciation of Mary, the day when the Angel Gabriel brought her the news that she was to bear the Christ Child.It does not take a mathematical genius to figure out how they calculated this, because March 25 it is exactly nine months before Christmas Day.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Christian Church, the Calendar and New Year's Day
Before Christian times, ancient peoples had many other ways of deciding the new years, usual tied to the solstice or the equinox.The ancient Egyptians kept very close track of the stars, and used the autumn equinox of what is no...
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