CHANGING THE CALENDAR WON’T BE EASY

Recent reports in the media suggest that both Roman Catholic Pope Francis and Anglican Archibishop of Canterdury, Most Rev. Justin Welby, are prepared to discuss the possibility of changing the date of Easter. The Coptic Orthodox Pope, Tawadros II, has said that he is also ready the join the negotiations. I wonder what they would agree on - if they ever did.

The difficulty we face is changing the present calendar in any way is a confusion of religious and secular measurements of the year. Our present system was approved by Roman Catholic Pope Gregory XIII on February 24, 1582. That change from the ancient Julian calendar, established in 46 BCE by Julius Caesar, occurred only in those states where papal authority applied.

Great Britain, a few other western European states and Scandinavia demurred. No longer politically subservient to the Roman Catholic Pope`s degrees they continued to use the Julian calendar for another two generations. Not until 1752 did Britain and its American colonies accept the Gregorian calendar we still follow worldwide.

At the same time Christian churches throughout Western Europe and across the world retained their traditional liturgical calendars featuring the beginning of the Christian Year as the First Sunday in Advent, the fourth Sunday prior to Christmas celebrated on the 25^th of December. That made it possible for churches to celebrate the great festivals of Christmas and Easter, as well as days for fasting and saints’ days throughout their special annual cycle.

Not so the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Some of them still retained their practice of following the Julian calendar. While Western Christians celebrate their Christmas on December 25^th and the secular world generally celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1, Orthodox Christians wait until January 6 for their Christmas celebrations.

Modern political, commercial and industrial activities have not been particularly observant of any religious calendar. In this age of widespread understanding of religious and cultural differences, each community has its own calendar related to its specific culture. For instance, in 2016 the Chinese New Year begins on February 8^th. The Jewish New Year, called Rosh HaShanah, begins at sunset on Sunday, October 2^nd and continues until Tuesday, October 4^th. The Muslim New Year, Muharram, begins on October 8^th.

The date of Easter is also a problem. It follows the lunar calendar. Traditionally the Christian festival of Easter and its associated preparation of six weeks of Lent began on Ash Wednesday, a day of special penitence set as the Wednesday of the week before the first Sunday of Lent. So this year it began yesterday, February 10, so Easter will celebrated on March 27. In this unusual order Easter Day was established as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox by the Council of Nicea in 325.

I once wrote an article proposing a more orderly secular calendar totally separate from any religious calendar or our present secular way of measuring time. My proposal gave each month a full thirty days making an even 360 days in each year. Then, between the old and the new years, we all take a five day universal vacation. That would still need one extra day every four years, but surely no one would protest that.

 The beauty of such a system would definitively separate the religious and liturgical celebration of Christian festivals from the secular and commercial calendar marking the end of one year and the beginning of each new one. After all, it was the political influence of Roman Catholic Pope Gregory XIII that established our current calendar in February 1592. It would also separate other religious cultural celebrations of a new year from our increasingly secular practices.

We still mark the beginning of a new year as January 1^st because in the Roman calendar that was the feast day of the god Janus from which the name of the month is derived. Janus was thought of as a god who faced both forwards and backwards. That is still a very human way of marking the new year. At different times and in different cultures, the beginning of a new year has also been celebrated at the spring or the autumnal equinoxes. But that wouldn’t work except in the Northern Hemisphere. Even then it could vary as much as three or four different days from year to year. We would still be in a mess, wouldn’t we? 

COUNTING TIME

“Our feeble ways of counting time, with a curious mixture of Roman/Greek/Julian/Gregorian elements in our calendar, none the less has powerful symbolic value.” So wrote Professor James Tabor, of the University of North Carolina, in his brief New Year’s Day blog https://jamestabor.com/

His point is well taken. Our calendar is a mess, but it is still our calendar. This curious mixture of religious, secular and meteorological data has a hoary history. Most confusing of all its strange details is this month, February 2016.

This ancient rhyme about it was one of our early childhood learnings about the calendar.

Thirty days hath September, 

April, June and November;                                                                                             excepting leap year, once in four,                                                                  

February has one day more.

There have been various alternative English versions over the centuries. A Latin version has been dated as far back as 1488.

The Weather Network, Canada’s most quoted source of weather information, a posted very helpful article that explains why 2016 is another leap year. As the ancient rhyme states the term comes from the necessary addition of an extra day every four years to account for the fact that each day is only 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds long, not 24 hours. That is how long it actually takes our planet Earth to make one revolution on its axis. Over the years that brief daily gap in time keeps adding up.

A solar year, the time it takes for the earth to make its annual orbit of the sun from one spring equinox to the next, takes actually 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds longer. To keep the measurement of years on the calendar in synch with the actual length of the solar year, we “leap over” one day every fourth year. If we didn’t, our calendar would become out of order with the actual seasons by as much as one month every 125 years. It has all happened before. That is why we have to correct our calendar every now and then.

For all the details, see this very detailed and diagramed posting:

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/leap-year-2016-puts-february-29-back-on-the-calendar/61821/

So why don’t we change the way we count time? That’s another subject altogether.