NEW YEAR'S DAY AND THE CALENDAR
I came across a discussion the other day as to whether it is right to
tell children and to let them believe that Santa Claus puts Christmas
presents in their stockings, and that Peter Pan really comes in at the
window and teaches nice little boys and girls to float through the
air. I was surprised that anyone should be so singularly ignorant of
child-nature as to hold that children really believe these things.
Children have a wonderful and special faculty of "make-believe," which
is not the same as "belief." All the time when a child is indulging in
"make-believe" (a sort of willing self-illusion or waking dream) its
real, though tender, reasoning-power is merely "suspended," and is not
offended or outraged. That power can on emergency be brought to the
front, and the little one will say, "Of course, they're not real," or
"I always knew he didn't really come down the chimney." So that I do
not think anyone need be anxious as to doing harm or laying the
foundations of future distrust by telling fairy-tales to the very
young. If told in the right form and spirit they are received by
six-year-old and older children readily and naturally as belonging to
that delicious world of "make-believe" which (as one of their own
orators, I believe, has said) "children of even the meanest
intelligence will not be guilty of confounding with that very inferior
every-day world of reality in which we find, much to our regret, that
it is necessary to spend so large a part of our time." The power of
make-believe is almost limitless, and makes its appearance even in the
speechless infant of less than two years old, who will gather fruit
from a coloured picture, generously offer you a bite, and pretend to
swallow the rest itself. Make-believe must have been a very big
factor in the life of the ape-like predecessors of prehistoric man.
Deception in the world of reality is very different from make-believe,
and a terrible thing. To the child--deception in regard to real
things, whatever excuses adults may put forward in its defence, is
well-nigh unforgivable. To be one who never says "it is" when it is
not, nor "it will be" when it will not be--that is to be a friend on
whom a child rests in perfect trust and happiness.
What have these thoughts to do with the New Year? Merely this, that it
is not only with and for children that we make-believe at this
season--we all of us, more or less, indulge in a make-believe about
the New Year. As the clock strikes its twelve notes at midnight on
December 31st, and all the bells of a great city are heard hovering in
the air, sending forth their sweet sounds from far and near into the
fateful night, there are few of us who have not a feeling that a great
event has occurred. A physical change has set in--the Old Year is dead
and gone, and the New Year, something tangible, which you can let in
at the door or the window--has just come into being, and is there
waiting for us. We are, of course, indulging in "make-believe," for
there is no New Year, with any natural, noteworthy thing to mark its
commencement, starting at midnight on December 31st. New Years begin
every day and hour, and it is by no means agreed upon by all nations
of the earth to pretend that the 1st of January is the critical day
which we must regard as that portentous epoch, the beginning of the
New Year. This choice of a day was made by the Romans, and that
wonderful man Julius Caesar had a great deal to do with it; modern
Europe adopted his arrangement of the year or calendar. But the Jews
have their own calendar and their own New Year's Day, which varies
from year to year, from our September 5th to our October 7th. It is,
however, to them always the first day of the month Tishri, and the
first day of their new year. The Mahomedans took the date of the
flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina--the night of July 15th, 622
A.D.--as the commencement of their "era," and its anniversary is the
first day of their month Muharram and the first day of their
year--their New Year's Day. As, although they reckon twelve months to
the year, their months are true lunar months, and are not corrected as
are those in use by us (as I will explain below); their year consists
of 354 days 8 hours, and so does not run parallel to our year at all.
Their New Year's day, which began by being our July 16th, was in the
next year coincident with our July 6th, then in three successive years
it occurred on different days of June, and so on through May, April,
and the preceding months, so that in thirty-two and a half of our
years their New Year's Day has run through all our months and comes
back again to July.
So much for New Year's Days; they are arbitrary selections, and though
the Roman New Year's Day, or January 1st, has been precisely defined
and fixed by the determination by astronomers of the position of the
earth on that day in its revolution around the sun, yet the original
selection of January 1st for the beginning of the year seems to have
been merely the result of previous errors and negligence in attempting
to fix the winter solstice (which now comes out as December 22nd).
This is the day when the sun is lowest and the day shortest; after it
has passed the sun appears gradually to acquire a new power, and
increases the duration of his stay above the horizon until the longest
day is reached--the summer solstice (June 21st). Julius Caesar took
January 1st for New Year's Day as being the first day of a month
nearest to the winter solstice. The ancient Greeks regarded the
beginning of September as "New Year."
Were mankind content with the measure of time by the completion of a
cycle of revolution of the earth around the sun--that is the year--and
by the revolution of the earth on its own axis--that is the day or
day-night ([Greek: nychthemeron]) of the Greeks--the notation of time
and of seasons would be comparatively simple. No one seems to know why
or when the day was first divided into twenty-four hours, nor why
sixty minutes were taken in the hour and sixty seconds in the minute.
The ancient astronomers of Egypt and China, and their beliefs in
mystical numbers, have to do with the first choosing of these
intervals in unrecorded ages of antiquity (as much as 2000 or 3000
B.C.). The seven days of the week correspond to the five planets known
to the ancients, with the addition of the sun and the moon. But the
Greeks made three weeks of ten days each in a month. The true
year--the exact period of a complete revolution of the earth around
the sun--is 365 days 5 hours 18 minutes and 46 seconds. It was
measured with a fair amount of accuracy by very ancient races of men,
who fixed the position of the rising sun at the longest day by
erecting big stones, one close at hand and one at a distance, so as to
give a line pointing exactly to the rising spot of the sun on the
horizon, as at Stonehenge. They recorded the number of days which
elapsed before the longest day again appeared, and they marked also
the division of that period by the two events of equally long sunlight
and darkness--the spring and the autumn "equinox." It is obvious that
if they took 365 days roughly as the period of revolution they would
(owing to the odd hours and minutes left out) get about a day wrong in
four years, and it was the business of the priests--even in ancient
Rome the pontiffs were charged with this duty--to make the correction
add the missing day, and proclaim the chief days of the year--the
shortest day, the longest day, and the equinox-days of equal halves of
sunshine and darkness. In ancient China, if the State astronomer made
a wrong calculation in predicting an eclipse he was decapitated.
It is easy to understand how it became desirable to recognise more
convenient divisions of the year than the four quarters marked by the
solstices and the equinoxes. Various astronomical events were studied,
and their regular recurrence ascertained, and they were used for this
purpose. But the most obvious natural timekeeper to make use of,
besides the sun, was the moon. The moon completes its cycle of change
on the average in 29-1/2 days. It was used by every man to mark the
passage of the year, and its periods from new moon to new moon were
called, as in our language, "months" or "moons," and divided into
quarters. It is, however, an awkward fact that twelve lunar months
give 354 days, so that there are eleven days left over when the solar
year is divided into lunar months. The attempt to invent and cause the
adoption of a system which shall regularly mark out the year into the
popular and universally recognised "moons," and yet shall not make the
year itself, so built up, of a length which does not agree with the
true year recorded by the return of the rising sun to exactly the same
spot on the horizon after 365 days and a few hours, has been
throughout all the history of civilised man, and even among
prehistoric peoples, a matter of difficulty. It has led to the most
varied and ingenious systems, entrusted to the most learned priests
and state officers, and mostly so complicated as to break down in the
working, until we come to the great clear-headed man Julius Caesar.
In the very earliest times of the city of Rome the solar year, or
complete cycle of the seasons, was divided into ten lunar months
covering 304 days, and it is not known how the remaining days
necessary to complete the solar revolution were dealt with, or
disposed of. The year was considered to commence with March, probably
with the intention of getting New Year's Day near to the spring
equinox. The Celtic people and the Druids, with their mistletoe rites,
kept New Year also at that time. The ten Roman months were named
Martius, Aprilus, Maius, Junius, Quintillis, Sextilis, September,
October, November, December. In the reign of the King Numa two months
were added to the year--namely, Januarius at the beginning and
Februarius at the end. In 452 B.C. February was removed from the end
and given second place. The Romans thus arranged twelve months into
the year, as the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks had long before
done. The months were made by law to consist alternately of
twenty-nine and of thirty days (thus keeping near to the average
length of a true lunar cycle), and an odd day was thrown in for luck,
making the year to consist of 355 days. This, of course, differs from
the solar year by ten days and a bit. To make the solar year and the
civil or calendar year coincide as nearly as might be, Numa ordered
that a special or "intercalary" month should be inserted every second
year between February 23rd and 24th. It was called "Mercedonius," and
consisted of twenty-two and of twenty-three days alternately, so that
four years contained 1465 days, giving a mean of 366-1/4 days to each
year. But this gave nearly a day too much in each year of the calendar
(as the legal or civil year is called) as compared with the true solar
year, agreement with which was the object in view. So another law was
made to reduce the excess of days in every twenty-four years.
Obviously the superintendence of these variations, and the public
declaration of the calendar for each year, was a very serious and
important task, affecting all kinds of legal contracts. The pontiffs
to whom the duty was assigned abused their power for political ends,
and so little care had they taken to regulate the civil year and keep
it in coincidence with the solar year that in the time of Julius Caesar
the civil equinox differed from the astronomical by three months, the
real spring equinox occurring, not at the end of what was called March
by the calendar, but in June!
Julius Caesar took the matter in hand and put things into better order.
He abolished all attempt to record by the calendar a lunar year of
twelve lunar months; he fixed the length of the civil year to agree as
near as might be with that of the solar year, and arbitrarily altered
the months; in fact, abandoned the "lunar month" and instituted the
"calendar month." Thus he decreed that the ordinary year should be 365
days, but that every fourth year (which, for some perverse reason, we
call "leap" year) should have an extra day. He ordered that the
alternate months, from January to November inclusive, should have
thirty-one days and the others thirty days, excepting February, which
was to have in common years twenty-nine, but in every fourth year (our
leap year) thirty. This perfectly reasonable, though arbitrary,
definition of the months was accompanied by the alteration of the name
of the month Quintilis to Julius, in honour of the great man. Later
Augustus had the name of the month Sextilis altered to Augustus for
his own glorification, and in order to gratify his vanity a law was
passed taking away a day from February and putting it on to August, so
that August might have thirty-one days as well as July, and not the
inferior total of thirty previously assigned to it! At the same time,
so that three months of thirty-one days might not come together,
September and November were reduced to thirty days, and thirty-one
given to October and December. In order to get everything into order
and start fair Julius Caesar restored the spring equinox to March 25th
(Numa's date for it, but really four days late). For this purpose he
ordered two extraordinary months, as well as Numa's intercalary month
Mercedonius, to be inserted in the year 47 B.C., giving that year in
all 445 days. It was called "the last year of confusion." January 1st,
forty-six years before the birth of Christ and the 708th since the
foundation of the city, was the first day of "the first Julian year."
Although Julius Caesar's correction and his provisions for keeping the
"civil" year coincident with the astronomical year were admirable, yet
they were not perfect. His astronomer, by name Sosigenes, did his
best, but assumed the astronomical year to be 11 min. 14 sec. longer
than it really is. In 400 years this amounts to an error of three
days. The increasing disagreement of the "civil" and the "real"
equinox was noticed by learned men in successive centuries. At last,
in A.D. 1582, it was found that the real astronomical equinox, which
was supposed to occur on March 25th, when Julius Caesar introduced his
calendar (not on March 21st, as was later discovered to be the fact),
had retrograded towards the beginning of the civil year, so that it
coincided with March 11th of the calendar. In order to restore the
equinox to its proper place (March 21st), Pope Gregory XIII directed
ten days to be suppressed in the calendar--of that year--and to
prevent things going wrong again it was enacted that leap-year day
shall not be reckoned in those centenary years which are not multiples
of 400. Thus Pope Gregory got rid of three days out of the Julian
calendar, or civil year, in every 400 years, since 1600 was retained
as a leap-year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900, though according to the
former law leap-years, were made common years, whilst 2000 will be a
leap-year. In order to correct a further minute error, namely, the
fact that the calendar year as now amended is 26 sec. longer than the
true solar year, it is proposed that the year 4000 and all its
multiples shall be common years, and not leap years. This is a matter
which, though practical, is of distinctly remote importance. Some
people like to look well ahead.
The alteration in the calendar made by Pope Gregory was successfully
opposed for a long time in Great Britain by popular prejudice. It was
called "new style," and was at last accepted, as in other European
countries, but has never been adopted in Russia, which retains the
"old style." An Act of Parliament was passed in 1751 ordering that the
day following September 2nd, 1752, should be accounted the fourteenth
of that month. Many people thought that they had been cheated out of
eleven days of life, and there were serious riots! The change had been
already made in Scotland in the year 1600 without much outcry. The
Scotch were either too "canny" or too dull to "fash" themselves about
it.
Let us now revert for a moment to the proceedings of Oriental
potentates in regard to astronomers, a class of scientific
functionaries whom they have from remote ages been in the habit of
employing. It appears that in China there is no attempt to make the
civil year or year of the calendar coincide with the astronomical
year. The astronomical year is reckoned as beginning when the sun
enters Capricorn, our winter solstice, and is thus more reasonably
defined than is the commencement of our New Year, which is nine days
late. Twelve months are recognised; the first is called Tzu, the
second Chou, and the third Yin, and the rest respectively Mao, Chen,
Su, Wu, Wei, Shen, Yu, Hsu, Hai. But the calendar year, on the other
hand, begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall. He is like
the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, "Make it so," and it is
so. With great ceremony he issues a calendar ten months in advance,
fixing as he pleases all the important festive and lucky days of the
year. Various emperors have made New Year's Day in the fourth, third,
second, first, or twelfth month. It has now been fixed for many
centuries in the second astronomical month. I have mentioned above
that the ancient Greeks reckoned the New Year as beginning about the
end of September. But the reckoning differed in the different States,
and so did the names of the months. Although the Greek astronomers
determined the real solar year with remarkable accuracy, and proposed
very clever modes of correcting the calendar so as to use the lunar
months in reckoning, there was no general system adopted, no agreement
among the "home-ruling" States.
I have stated above that the official Chinese astronomers sometimes
get their heads cut off for not correctly foretelling an eclipse.
Illustrating this there is the following story of a visit paid about
forty years ago to the Observatory in Greenwich Park by the Shah of
Persia of that date. The Persians have many close links with the
Chinese, and share their view of astronomy as a sort of State
function, in which the Emperor has special authority. The Shah
accordingly made a great point of visiting the British State
observatory, in company with King Edward, who was then Prince of
Wales. Sir George Airy was the Astronomer Royal, and showed the party
over the building and gave them peeps through telescopes. "Now show me
an eclipse of the sun," said the Shah, speaking in French. Sir George
pretended not to hear, and led the way to another instrument. "Dog of
an astronomer," said the Shah, "produce me an eclipse!" Sir George
politely said he had not got one and could not oblige the King of
Kings. "Ho, ho!" said the Shah, turning in great indignation to the
Prince of Wales. "You hear! cut his head off!" Sir George's life was,
as a matter of fact, spared, but in the course of a year he retired,
and was succeeded by another Astronomer Royal. On his appointment that
gentleman was astonished at receiving a letter of congratulation from
the Shah of Persia. The Shah evidently thought that his bloodthirsty
request had been attended to, though with some delay. He proceeded to
tell the new Astronomer Royal that he had a few days before writing
witnessed a total eclipse of the sun in the observatory at Teheran.
This was perfectly correct. The suggestion was that the Teheran
astronomers knew their business, and had the good sense to arrange an
eclipse when a Royal Visitor wished for one, and so escape
decapitation--a course which the kindly Shah evidently wished to
indicate to the new and young Astronomer Royal as that which he should
pursue in order to avoid the fate of his unhappy and obstinate
predecessor. The attitude of the Shah towards science is one which is
not altogether unknown in this country.