CALENDAR DATES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 64, 16 March 1936, Page 6

CALENDAR DATES.

New Year's Day begins tcji days after the solar year ends with the "shortest day" (December 22) because when Julius Caesar established the Julian Calendar in 46 B.C. the full moon nearest to the winter solstice shone ten days after the "shortest day." If the full moon in the year 46 B.C. had shone on our present December 22 the Julian calendar would have begun and ended with the solar year. The Romans, with people throughout their empire, had been using moon-calendars; like the lunar-calendars now used by nearly 60 per cent of humanity living in Asia, Africa, Oceania, etc. Julius Caesar decided to locate the calendar's New Year's Day near the "shortest day" because the majority of his people regarded the "shortest day" as indicating the end of the sun-indicated solar year. He considered that the Egyptian calendar of twelve equal months of 30 days each, with five days as holidays after the twelfth month, would be much more helpful to all people in the empire. As people throughout the empire had been using lunar months, . which alternated 29 and 30 days in length (because the 'moon's cycle of phases averages 20.53 days per moon), and as the masses of the people he ruled were illiterate and mostly slaves, Julius Caesar knew that they preferred the shorter odd-numbered months of 20 days. This gave rise to tho Roman slogan that "odd numbers were lucky." Julius Caesar could not then establish even-numbered months of 30 days because every Roman mother wanted her son to be born in an odd-numbered "lucky month." He, therefore, decided to spread the Egyptian year-ending five days as holidays, and made them the 31st dates, ending his odd-numbered months (1, 3, 5, 7 arid 9), and reduced February to 29 days, thereby making six odd and six even months, which were more acceptable to tho Romans.

The Abyssinian calendar of twelve equal months of 30 days each, with five holidays (in leap year six) following its last month, is a more convenient and better calendar than any other now used, except the Egyptian (Coptic) calendar, from which it was copied in the year 7 A.D. Both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars were derived from that same Egyptian source. The Egyptians derived their more accurate knowledge of the year's length and of the seasons by measuring on each date beginning spring time the length of the shortest receding shadow of the Great Pyramid at noon, on the Meridian line, and counting the 305 days between each of three successive priest-guiding years ending on February 2Stli. At the end of each fourth leap year its 36Cth date was counted in licforo the Pyramid's priest-astronomer could measure the dayshortened leap-day length of the shortest noonshadow on the meridian line. He then observed that the "leap-day" had leaped back about four inches closer to the Pyramid's edge than it measured four years before. That significant fact originated the name "leap year" and located "leap day" as February 29 in the Julian and in the Gregorian calendars. The Abyssinians and Coptic Egyptians more truly locate their leap years one year earlier than do the Gregorian-calendar users.