calendars (was: samhain?)

On Wednesday, November 3, 2004, at 10:09 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 07:39:24PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
>> To add to the fun, both "New Style" - with the dates given above - and
>> "Old Style" (following the Julian Calendar) quarters days are observed
>> for
>> different purposes. The financial year, for example, begins with the Old
>> Style Lady Day, now the 6th April, since until we adopted the New Style
>> calender in 1752 Lady Day was also "New Year's Day". Rather boringly ever
>> since then New year's Day has been Jan. 1st.
>
> Though for some reason the fiscal date was not further adjusted when the
> Julian and Gregorian calendars drifted further apart in 1900; Julian
> March 25th is Gregorian April 7th these days.
I imagine it was simply because by 1900, it was no longer remembered that
the fiscal year began on the Old Style "lady Day'.

> Based on what I've read, January 1st was always the date called "New
> Year's Day"; March 25th was called simply "Lady's Day" even when it was
> the date upon which the year number changed.
I am probably guilty of exaggeration or over-simplification. I get the
impression, however, that in earlier times New years's day (that is, Jan.
1st) was not much celebrated. I guess the annual round of religious
festivals kept track of the passing of time. I suspect that it is with the
decline of widespread observance of most of the old festivals that secular
'land marks' like the New Year have grown in importance.

> The old scheme is admittedly more interesting, but for "interesting" I
> prefer to switch calendars entirely. :) The Jews, for instance, change
Yep - the Jewish calendar is certainly more interesting than the Gregorian.
  The Mayan calendar is even better :)

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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