How The Calender Got That Way
by Lee Carter
In the days of the Roman Republic, the calendar was numbered from the founding of the city of Rome--which according to the present calendar, would be 753 BC. And March 15th--the Ides of March, was designated as New Year's Day. However, this was a lunisolar calendar of only ten moons, or 'months"--which totaled 355 days. So unless otherwise corrected, the months would have a tendency to rotate throughout the year and get completely out of sync with the seasons. Consequently, an extra month was inserted from time to time, so the calendar would bear some relation to the position of the sun. Unfortunately, the insertion of these intercalendary days was left up to a committee of politicians, so it was rare for any two years to be exactly the same length. And specific days of the year bore only a tenuous relationship to solar time.

Greece, and all of northern Europe, operated on a solar calendar, with the new year starting on the winter solstice. When the Romans invaded Greece in the 5th century BC, they realized the advantages of a solar calendar. In 153 BE, New Year's Day was moved to January first, since Janus was an important god in the Roman pantheon, and the god of doorways and new beginnings.

Finally, in 46 BC, Julius Caesar switched from a lunar to a solar calendar. He divided the year into 365 days, with twelve months, which alternatively had 30 or 31 days, except February, which was considered an unlucky month, so it had only 29 days. But every four years it lengthened to a full 30 days. This gave an average year 365 1/4 days. New Years were still left on January first. One of the new months was named July, in honor of Julius Caesar. But when Julius died, he was succeeded by the superstitious and egocentric Augustus Caesar, who named the extra month after himself, and then ruined the logical arrangement by declaring that his moth should have just as many days as Julius' month. And the unlucky month of February had more days than necessary. So he shortened February to 28 days and extended August to 31 days. Then to avoid having three months in a row with 31 days, one day was taken from September and November and given to October an December.

The major festival of the year, in ancient Rome, was called the "Saturnalia," and it centered around the winter solstice. According to the Roman Republican calendar, it began on December 17th and lasted eight days (one Roman week). But since the Republican Calendar varied in length, it seems probable that the actual solstice usually fell sometime between the middle of December and the first of January. When Julius instituted his first calendar in 46 BE, the year had crept as much as 80 days out of step with the sun. So he added a total of 90 days. According to William M. O'Neil (Time and the Calendars, 1978), this set December 25 as the winter solstice, March 25 as the vernal equinox, June 24 as the summer solstice, and September 24 as the autumnal equinox.

But the Julian calendar had an error of eleven minutes and a few seconds. The tropical year is actually shorter than the 365 1/4 days he had established -- which would cause the four celestial corners of the year to slip backwards by one day every 130 years.

In the third century AD, the Emperor Aurelian established another official holiday called "Sol Invicti" -- meaning unconquered sun, in honor of the Syrian sun god, "Sol," and also in honor of himself, since the emperors were regarded as the divine incarnation of Apollo. This holiday was held on December 24 and 25, and it more or less established December 25 as the official solstice. All other religions that worshipped sun gods also accepted December 25 as a fixed date for their celebrations. The earliest Christians assumed that Christ was born and, many years later, was resurrected on the same day -- March 25 -- which was assumed to be the vernal equinox. Later Christians celebrated the birth of Christ on January 6, along with the festival of Isis. By the fourth century, many Christians were referring to December 25 as the day of the "unconquered son," in defiance of the emperor, and January 6 was then called "Epiphany," when either the magi were supposed to have visited or Christ was baptized, or maybe both.

In 325 AD, which is when the Catholic church was officially organized, it decreed that the resurrection of Christ should b e celebrated at the beginning of spring, when all life was renewed. And the beginning of spring was determined by the vernal equinox. But they noticed that, by then, the equinox had crept backwards from March 25 to March 21. So they re-established March 21 as the new, official equinox. That, in turn, would set the date for "Easter" -- named after "Oestre", the goddess of fertility. This means that the other four corners of the year would also have crept backwards by four days. And the winter solstice would then have shifted from December 25th to the 21st. However, it was another 25 years before Christmas was established. In 350 AC, Pope Julius I decreed that the nativity should be celebrated on the same day as all other sun gods, namely, December 25. Certainly he would have realized that the solstice no longer fell on the 25th. But by then the celebration of the nativity on the 25th had already become a well-established tradition in Rome.

Many other churches, however, did not want to be associated with the pagan religions; and to this day the Eastern Orthodox church celebrates the birth of Christ on January 7 -- the day after Epiphany.

In the fourth century, Emperor Constantine established our seven-day week-based on Jewish tradition.

In the sixth century, Pope John Counted backward to the presumed date of Christ's birth, calculated from the reign of Pontius Pilate, and renumbered all the years in history as BC and AD ("Before Christ" and "Anno Domini," meaning "In the Year of Our Lord"). The year 753 AUC (ab urbe condita, meaning after the founding of Rome) was then called 1 AD. BC and AD are now being replaced, at least by non-Christians with BCE (before the common era) and CE (of the common era).

Throughout the early Middle Ages, most of Europe disregarded Roman practices and continued to start the year with the presumed equinox -- March 25. England, however, retained the practice of starting the year on the presumed solstice -- December 25.