Seems like that would be likely, with a creeping rounding error moving it into January, then Feb, then March, and then corrected by Pope Gregory. But should he have just pegged it to the equinox?
Well Roman magistrates took office on January 1st and served for one year. Wasn’t the new year ounce celebrated in March?
In Roman times the calendar did start in March. Hence the names of the months corresponding to latin numbers – September (7), October (8), November (9), December (10). I’m not sure when it got changed to January.
The Romans changed the beginning of the year to January 1. Over the centuries many European countries drifted away to a variety of different dates. Then, beginning in the Middle Ages, they gradually drifted back.
In establishing the Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory was concerned with linking Easter to the vernal equinox, not with linking the beginning of the year to the solstice. In fact, his calendar correction didn’t directly address the beginning of the year at all, although some countries (for example Great Britain) switched to January 1 at the same time as converting from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.
The original Roman calendar only had ten months: Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December, with some 60 days accounted for outside of the annual calendar. In the eighth century BCE, a Roman King reformed the calendar, adding Ianuarius and Februarius to the end of the year. There was also a complicated system that involved occasional declarations of an extra “month” inserted near the end of Februarius. That system lasted until Julius’ reform in about 45 BCE, where a more accurate calendar (the “Julian,” when Ianuarius and Februarius moved to the beginning of the year) was introduced that lasted until the Sixteenth Century in most of Europe (and much later in some parts).
I should note also that the drift was in the opposite direction–the winter solstice occurred around December 21 when the Julian Calendar was established, then drifted forward to about December 10, and was permanently ratcheted back to December 21 by the Gregorian calendar. It never has occurred on January 1 since people have been using either calendar.
Almost correct. The soltice occurred on or about Dec 25 when Caesar reformed the calendar. The Gregorian reform moved the solstice back to about the day it happened at the time of the Council of Nicea when the date of Easter was set.
Norwegian Parish records used Easter as the start of the year until at least the 1700s. Presumably that was also the rule in Denmark at the time.
Easter would make sense if we counted from the end of Jesus’ life, since we don’t know what day (or year) he was really born.
The French Revolutionary calendar started with the autumnal equinox, conveniently the same day as the founding of the Republique. It never really caught on, even in France, though.
Well, really bad idea, for a society where a good chunk of the population are farmers.
Farmers naturally want the year to start just before first plowing (or whatever you do to start up the season). Failing that, any time in the depths of winter between last harvest and first plowing. Which is why most calendar’s start around early spring or the winter equinox.
Of course, now the U.S. Government starts its fiscal year around the autumnal equinox…