THE CALENDAR: ITS ORIGINS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12486, 21 October 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CALENDAR: ITS ORIGINS

PART PLAYED HY MASTER

FITTING SUN TO MOON

Why does Easter fall on differing dates every year? asks George Edinger, and proceeds to answer it. In the present calendar, which is observed all over Europe and America, the anniversary of the Resurrection is fixed as being the Sunday after the full moon nearest the spring equinox (when the hours of 'ght and darkness are equal). If the full moon itself is on a Sunday, then aster is celebrated on the next Sunday after that. Easter, therefore may fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25 depending on the full moon.

Since the early days, every nation has found it hard to make the year, with its seasons and its days which depend on the sun, fit in with the months (or moon-ths) which depend on the phases of the moon.

From one new moon to the next the period is 295 days—-whereas for the earth to travel round the sun takes 365 days—which cannot be divided by 29^, Various ways have been adopted to reconcile these things. The Romans, from whom we derive our calendar, originally had ten months, each of 30 days, to coincide with'the periods of the moon, giving a year 300 days, with 65 odd days at the end of each.

About 400 years before Christ the 65 odd days were formed into two months of 32 and 33 days respectively. They were put into the beginning of the year and called after Janus, the old god of peace and the god of death, Febo (we get ,pur word fever from him). ‘ Febo’s was the dead month, when no plant flourished. So the months became Januarius and Februarius, with the rest following as before. Then, in 48 8.C., Julius Ceaser, reformed the entire calendar, reckoning that it takes 365 days and six hours for the earth to move round the sun, or, as the Romans thought, for the sun to move round the earth. Caesar distributed the 365 days among 12 months, alternately of 31 and 30 days. Out of the six hours left over he made an extra day every four years. This day was attached to the second month, Febo’s month, which was the shortest because nobody liked it. Under Augustus, the calendar took practically our present arrangement. In 1582 Pope Gergory XIII found that, in fact, this arrangement was not quite accurate. Every 128 years were were one day out. He reckoned that since the Resurrection we had gained 11 days because the year is actually less than 365 days six hours by eleven seconds. He therefore, in 158 2, cut 10 days out of October of that year. October 5 became October 15! To make sure that it wouldn’t occur again, the Gregorian calendar lays it down that February 29 shall be dropped from Leap Year three times in every 400 years.

The year 1900 was not a Leap Year. Neither was 1800 nor 1700. The year 2000 will he.