How the lore of New Year defeated the law of New Year
davidallengreen.com
davidallengreen.com
“Your observation about the misalignment between the numerical prefixes of the later months and their positions in the calendar is astute. This discrepancy arises from the evolution of the Roman calendar over time.
Original Roman Calendar: • Structure: The early Roman calendar, traditionally attributed to Romulus, the founder of Rome, comprised 10 months totaling 304 days. The year began in March (Martius) and concluded in December (December), followed by a winter period that was not assigned to any month. • Month Names and Numerical Order: 1. Martius (March) 2. Aprilis (April) 3. Maius (May) 4. Junius (June) 5. Quintilis (fifth month) 6. Sextilis (sixth month) 7. September (seventh month) 8. October (eighth month) 9. November (ninth month) 10. December (tenth month)
Introduction of January and February: • Reforms by Numa Pompilius: To align the calendar more accurately with the lunar year, the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, is traditionally credited with adding two months: • Januarius (January) • Februarius (February) • Impact on Month Positions: These additions shifted the original months from their positions, making September the ninth month, October the tenth, and so forth. Despite this shift, the original names were retained, leading to the current numerical misalignment.
Renaming of Quintilis and Sextilis: • Quintilis to July: In 44 BCE, following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman Senate renamed Quintilis to July in his honor, as it was the month of his birth. • Sextilis to August: Later, in 8 BCE, the month Sextilis was renamed August to honor Emperor Augustus. To match the length of July, a day was added to August, resulting in both months having 31 days.
Clarifying Misconceptions: • Insertion of Months: The renaming of Quintilis and Sextilis did not involve the insertion of new months but rather the renaming of existing ones. Therefore, this action did not disrupt the numerical sequence of the months. • Retention of Numerical Names: The numerical names for September through December persisted even after calendar reforms and the renaming of months. This retention is why there is a discrepancy between their names and their positions in the modern calendar.
Conclusion:
The misalignment between the numerical prefixes of the months September through December and their positions in the calendar results from historical reforms and the retention of traditional names despite changes in the calendar’s structure. The renaming of months to honor Julius Caesar and Augustus did not disrupt the numerical naming convention; instead, it was the earlier addition of January and February that shifted the original positions of the months, leading to the current nomenclature.”
You can see how this played out in England, a relative latecomer to the increasing year start consensus. Up until the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750, the year was considered to start on the 25th of March. This means that historical documents in England containing dates in January or February have what we would consider to be the 'wrong' year number on them. Pretty inconvenient, but at least the roman numbered months would have made some sense to a person living in England before 1750.
In practice, the only reason people can consider the tax year as ending on 31st March is because most people have no significant taxable events occurring between then and 5th April.
But if you sell shares that put you over the capital gains threshold, receive dividends, pay into your ISA or even receive interest from your bank account in those few days, these are all considered taxable events. For most people they are a non-issue due to the tax-free allowances on all these classes of income, but if you exceed the tax-free allowance for any of them, it's important you apportion them to the correct year.
on April 15 the taxes on your first quarter of the current year are also due.
the January 15 quarterly estimate is for the last quarter of the previous year, let's call it 2024. April 15 2025 is when you file your tax return for the 2024, but you HAVE ALREADY PAID OR HAD WITHHELD YOUR TAXES FOR 2024.
If you have earned more wages in 2024 than you did in 2023, you will only have to have paid the same as you ultimately owed in 2023 for 2024, and in that case you will have the chance to cough up the remainder on April 15, 2025, but that is nowhere near close to saying that is when you 2025 taxes are "due" as you are claiming.
It also makes the names of September, October, November, and December make sense. Those names come from the Roman words for 7, 8, 9, and 10, which were the numbers of those months in the old Roman calendar which did start the year on March 1. The Romans switch the start to January sometime around 700 BCE giving us the current ridiculous situation where those months are two months later in the year than their names suggest.
March through July follow a simple two-month cycle of 31 days, followed by 30, repeating at May and July. August breaks the cycle with 31 days, but it essentially restarts, and runs a second five months before it breaks again, at January (the 11th month, since we started from March). The third run obviously runs out after February, ending prematurely, but this doesn't really break the cycle, either. You just restart again with March!
This allows you to write some (relatively) simple conversions using just a few divisors, along with some conversions from 1-based to 0-based numbering, and back. 153 days every five months, 61 every two, and of course 31 for a single month. Divide the remainder from each prior division by the next divisor, and the final remainder is your (0-based) day of the month. The month itself (taking 0 = March) is then the sum of each quotient multiplied by the associated count of months.
Reversing the process, I'll leave to the reader.
That doesn’t look right.
The site that gave me the 700 BC date said it was done by king Numa Pompilius. Wikipedia’s article on him says that Plutarch is the source for the claim Numa moved the new year to January.
But Plutarch was writing around the 2nd century and Wikipedia says his writings about Numa give unique information on the Roman calendar which suggests that there aren’t other sources. Probably not worth trusting a single source that old writing about something 900 years older.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is
to be for you the first month, the first month of your
year. ..."https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2164005/jewis...
It was also the first month of the Roman calendar until January and February were added.
"Time immemorial" is an exaggeration, right, as many commenters here gave contrary examples.
From the point of view of an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere, the choice remains between the Winter solstice, i.e. the moment when the Sun begins its journey on the sky back towards us, after reaching a maximum distance on the sky from us, and the Spring equinox, the moment when the Sun returns on the sky to the northern hemisphere.
Those who are guilty for the fact that the solstices and the equinoxes do not fall on beginnings of months are Julius Caesar and his astronomer consultant, Sosigenes.
The Roman calendar had been very bad and it had drifted extremely from the astronomical year. The calendar reform of Caesar has corrected the length of the year, but it has failed to align the solstices and the equinoxes with the beginnings of months. Instead of that, the Winter solstice fell on the 25th of December and the Spring equinox fell on the 25th of March.
So the calendar of Julius Caesar is the origin of the adoption of the 25th of December for the Christmas and of the 25th of March for the beginning of the year in several countries.
Additional confusion has been created by the Gregorian calendar, which has not restored the calendar from the beginning of the Christian era, but it has restored the calendar of the 4th century, when the rules for computing the date of the Easter have been established. The calendar of the 4th century had been shifted by 3 days since the calendar reform of Caesar, resulting in the current dates for the Winter solstice and the Spring equinox around the 22th of December and the 22th of March.
So now not only the solstices and equinoxes do not fall on the beginnings of months, but they no longer fall on the traditional days of the 25th of their months.
Why? You could also eg pick where earth is closest or farthest from the sun, or at exactly average distance or anything like that.
> So the calendar of Julius Caesar is the origin of the adoption of the 25th of December for the Christmas and of the 25th of March for the beginning of the year in several countries.
Christmas wasn't invented yet whan Julius Caesar was alive. So the story must be a bit more complicated than that.
Hard to measure for people back then. Solstices and the equinoxes are easier.
> Christmas wasn't invented yet whan Julius Caesar was alive.
Doesn’t necessarily mean that Christmas was invented when the Calendar was fixed. The logic is the other way around. Solstices and the equinoxes are tend to be used as reference for special/holy days. Caesar‘s calendar gave them a certain date
The Egyptians picked the appearance of a certain store above the horizon as their fixed point for the year (or something like that). That was rational for them, but doesn't have all that much to do with equinoxes.
Your example of the Egyptians is also easy to measure.
I guess at that point mythology kicks in. Could explain why the winter solstice is often used: the dark timed are over, the days get brighter.
(This is all from memory, please don't quote me on this.)
It makes sense to use those as a basis.
And it makes sense to line up the months with those points.
But if the months don't line up, I think aligning with the nearest month is much better than not doing so. At least on the kind of solar calendar we use.
Months are obviously inspired by the moon, but there's no attempt in this system to make them go anywhere near lining up. And that inspiration wouldn't block any attempt to align week starts with month starts.
~365.2425 includes the leap year, century, and 4 century gregorian adjustments, and it's not a difficult number to remember actually.
"it's not quite .25? how much is it shy? .2425"
The only issue I see would be if you were born on a Monday your birthday would always be on a Monday.
Of course none of this is unheard of. The jewish calendar adds a leap month every 19 years to keep in sync with both the moon and the sun. Or if you want to go in the other direction you could just have one day not part of any week (cotsworth calendar)
Well january is literally named after janus, the deity of beginnings and endings.
Let’s not even start on pre-decimal coinage or pre-metric units