hitchies wrote:
Re Dilwyn's -
So, somewhere between 300 and 400 years after Christ's birth, his birthday moved to 25th December!
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Not in Ethiopia boyo (Jan 6th). I had two Christmases a year when I lived there!
That comes about because of the Gregorian reform of the Julian Calendar. The Julian calendar assumed an earth orbit of 365.25 days and so added a leap year every 4 years. However, the actual orbit is closer to 365.243 days and so the julian calendar added an extra day roughly every 134 years. To compensate, only centries exactly divisible by 400 are leap years in the Gregorian calandar and this is quite accurate (for about the next 3 millennia).
So how did 25 Dec become 6 Jan?
When the reform was made, the calendar had had 10 extra leap days it shouldn't have had - which were then dropped in one go. The English calendar, however wasn't reformed until a few centries later in 1752, by which time there was an extra day (ie 11 days) to lose, hence Sep 2 was followed by Sep 14. At the same time, the year start was changed from 25 March (9 months prior to 25 Dec - the "date" of Christ's conception), to 1 Jan. However, people objected to be taxed for 11 non-days and so held back their taxes, and hence the tax year of Apr 5.
When the calendar was reformed, the dates of festivals were held steady, ie Christmas was still 25 Dec. However, some objected and still stuck to the old calendar and so celebrated Christmas on 25 Dec on the old calendar, which, in that country was 12 days ahead (the reform happening later than England's), ie Jan 6 in the new calendar.
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