A Note On Birthdays
So what happens if the calendar changes so that it no longer has the same months or days as it used to have? What happens to your birthday?
In 1582, the Julian calendar was superseded by the Gregorian calendar, in yet another attempt to rectify calendar drift. At one fell swoop, Pope Gregory XIII added a 10-day correction and gave us the modern solar calendar — the one we use to this day.
Why was it so contentious? Gregory, not one to do things slowly or by halves, decided to do the correction all at once. That meant the last day of the Julian calendar was Thursday 4 Oct 1582, and the first day of the Gregorian calendar was Friday 15 Oct 1582. The days 5 Oct-14 Oct 1582 were gone forever.
So what happened to those people with birthdays which fell during those missing days? Well, there were riots and mass uprisings of course, with people clamouring to be given back the ten missing days of their lives. Somehow, a lot of people thought they'd been cheated of ten days. If you could think that, it shouldn't have been too hard to think that your lifespan had also been extended ten days, but no... human nature is infallibly bent and few thought of that point of view.
The Romans, during the time when the Julian calendar added more than a hundred days in one year, had been more sanguine. Some changed their birthdays, some kept their old ones in some abstruse mathematical conversion, some decided to go without a birthday, and some just set their birthday to be the first day of the year (on the principle that every year should have at least one day).
The Chinese are a little like that. Today is Man's Birthday, the seventh day of the Chinese calendar. Whoever doesn't have a birthday can have one today, and whoever already has one can adopt a spare one. Seems like a good idea to me! Happy birthday, everyone!
In 1582, the Julian calendar was superseded by the Gregorian calendar, in yet another attempt to rectify calendar drift. At one fell swoop, Pope Gregory XIII added a 10-day correction and gave us the modern solar calendar — the one we use to this day.
Why was it so contentious? Gregory, not one to do things slowly or by halves, decided to do the correction all at once. That meant the last day of the Julian calendar was Thursday 4 Oct 1582, and the first day of the Gregorian calendar was Friday 15 Oct 1582. The days 5 Oct-14 Oct 1582 were gone forever.
So what happened to those people with birthdays which fell during those missing days? Well, there were riots and mass uprisings of course, with people clamouring to be given back the ten missing days of their lives. Somehow, a lot of people thought they'd been cheated of ten days. If you could think that, it shouldn't have been too hard to think that your lifespan had also been extended ten days, but no... human nature is infallibly bent and few thought of that point of view.
The Romans, during the time when the Julian calendar added more than a hundred days in one year, had been more sanguine. Some changed their birthdays, some kept their old ones in some abstruse mathematical conversion, some decided to go without a birthday, and some just set their birthday to be the first day of the year (on the principle that every year should have at least one day).
The Chinese are a little like that. Today is Man's Birthday, the seventh day of the Chinese calendar. Whoever doesn't have a birthday can have one today, and whoever already has one can adopt a spare one. Seems like a good idea to me! Happy birthday, everyone!
etched with acid at 9:38:00 am
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