It is absurd and stupid to have the beginning year not also be the beginning of a month. (Same for weeks to months, things a dumb feature of our calendar). But December vs March is totally arbitrary, right?
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