All would have been well if the tropical year were really exactly 365.25 days long; but it isn't. The tropical year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds, or 365.24220 days long. The Julian year is, on the average, 11 minutes 14 seconds, or 0.0078 days, too long.
This may not seem much, but it means that the Julian year gains a full day on the tropical year in 128 years. As the Julian year gains, the vernal equinox, falling behind, comes earlier and earlier in the year. At the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, the vernal equinox was on March 21.
By A.D. 453 it was on March 20, by A.D. 581 on March 19, and so on. By A.D. 1263, in the lifetime of Roger Bacon, the Julian year had gained eight days on the Sun and the vernal equinox was on March 13.
Still not fatal, but the Church looked forward to an indefinite future and Easter was tied to a vernal equinox at March 21. If this were allowed to go on, Easter would come to be celebrated in midsummer, while Christmas would ed e into the spring. In 1263, therefore, Roger Bacon wrote a letter to Pope Urban IV explaining the situation. The Church, however, took over three centuries to consider the matter.
By 1582 the Julian calendar had gained two more days and the vernal equinox was falling on March I 1. Pope Gregory XIII finally took action. First, he dropped ten days, changing October 5, 1582 to October 15, 1582. That brought the calendar even with the Sun and the vernal equinox in 1583 fell on March 21 as the Council of Nicaea had decided it should.
The next step was to prevent the calendar from getting out of step again. Since the Julian year gains a full day every 128 years, it gains three full days in 384 years or, to approximate slightly, three full days in four centuries.
That means that every 400 years, three leap years (accord ing to the Julian system) ought to be omitted..
Consider the century years-1500, 1600, 1700, and so on. In the Julian year, all century years are divisible by 4 and are therefore leap years. Every 400 years there are 4 such century years, so why not keep 3 of them ordinary years, and allow onl one of them (the one that is divisible by 400) to be a leap year? This arrangement will match the year more closely to the Sun and give us the "Gre 'gorian calendar."
To summarize: Every 400 years, the Julian calendar allows 100 leap years for a total of 146,100 days. In that same 400 years, the Gregorian calendar allows only 97 leap years for a total of 146,097 days. Compare these lengths with that of 400 tropical years, which comes to 146,096.88. Whereas, in that stretch of time, the Julian year had gained 3.12 days on the Sun, the Gregorian year had gained only 0.12 days.
Still, 0.12 days is nearly 3 hours, and this means that in 3400 years the Gregorian calendar will have gained a full day on the Sun. Around A.D. 5000 we will have to consider dropping out one extra leap year., But the Church had waited a little too long to take action. Had it done the job a century earlier, all western Europe would have changed calendars without trouble.
By A.D. 1582, however, much of northern Europe bad turned Protestant. These nations would far sooner remain out of step with the Sun in accordance with the dictates of the pagan Caesar, than consent to be corrected by the Pope. Therefore they kept the Julian year.
The year 1600 introduced no crisis. It was a century year but one that was divisible by 400. Therefore, it was a leap year by both the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
But 1700 was a different matter. The Julian calendar had it as a leap year and the Gregorian di 'd not. By March 1, 1700, the Julian calendar was going to be an additional day ahead of the Sun (eleven days altogether). Denmark, the Netherlands, and Protestant Germany gave in and adopted the Gregorian calendar.
Great Britain and the American colonies held out until 1752 before giving in. Because of the additional day gained in 1700, they had to drop eleven days and changed September 2, 1752 to September 13, 1752. There were riots all over England as a result, for many people came quickly to the conclusion that they had suddenly been made eleven days older by legislation.
"Give us back our eleven days!" they cried in despair.
(A more rational objection was the fact that although the third quarter of 1752 was short eleven days, landlords calmly charged a full quarter's rent.)
As a result of this, it turns out that Washington was not born on "Washington's birthday." He was born on Febru ary 22, 1732 on the Gregorian calendar, to be sure, but the date recorded in the family Bible had to be the Julian date, February 11, 1732. When the changeover took place, Washington-a remarkably sensible man changed the date of his birthday and thus preserved the actual day.
The Eastern Orthodox nations of Europe were more stubborn than the Protestant nations. The years 1800 and 1900 went by. Both were leap years by the Julian calendar, but not by the Gregorian calendar. By 1900, then, the Julian vernal equinox was on March 8 and the Julian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Sun. It was not until after World War I that the Soviet Union, for instance, adopted the Gregorian calendar. (In doing so, the Soviets made a slight modification of the leap year pattern which made matters even more accurate. The Soviet calendar will not gain a day on the Sun until fully 35,000 years pass.)
The Orthodox churches themselves, however, still cling to the Julian year, which is why the Orthodox Christmas falls on January 6 on our calendar. It is still December 25 by their calendar.
In fact, a horrible thought occurs to me I was myself born at a time when the Julian calendar was still in force in the-ahem-old country. [Well, the Soviet Union, if you must know. I came here at the age of 3] Unlike George Washington, I never changed the birthdate and, as a result, each year I celebrate my birthday 13 days earlier than I should, making myseff 13 days older than I have to be.
And this 13-day older me is in all the records and I can't ever change it back.
Give me back my 13 days! Give me back my 13 days!
Give me back…
2. Begin At The Beginning
Each year, another New Year's Day falls upon us; and because my birthday follows hard upon New Year's Day, the beginning of the year is always a doubled occasion for great and somber soul-searching on my part.
Perhaps I can make my consciousness of passing time less poignant by thinking more objectively. For instance, who says the year starts on New Year's Day? What is there about New Year's Day that is different from any other day? What makes January I so special?
In fact, when we chop up time into any kind of units, how do we decide with which unit to start?
For instance, let's begin at the beginning (as I dearly love to do) and consider the day itself.
The day is composed of two parts, the daytime* and the night. Each, separately, has a natural astronomic beginning. The daytime begins with sunrise; the night be gins with sunset. (Dawn and twilight encroach upon the night but that is a mere detail.)
In the latitudes in which most of humanity live' how ever, both daytime and night change in length during the year (one growing longer as the other grows shorter) and there is, therefore, a certain convenience in using daytime plus night as a single twenty-four-hour unit of time. The combination of the two, the day, is of nearly constant duration.
It is very annoying that "day" means both the sunlit portion of time and the twenty-four-hour period of daytime and night together. This is a completely unnecessary shortcoming of the admirable English language. I understand that the Greek language contains separate words for the two entities. I shall use "daytime" for the sunlit period and "day" for the twenty-four-hour period.