What would New Year's be like had Britain Just Corrected the Julian Calendar Instead of Dumping It?
Imagine how anxious you would be if the calendar were altered in a substantial way. Consider for example if it were decided that in 2025, September 2nd would be followed by September 13th. This may sound ridiculous but this is what happened throughout the British Empire in 1752. Among other things, it led to some Britons celebrating Christmas on January 5th for several decades. You might then wonder: Did they celebrate New Year’s before Christmas?
From historian Robert Poole’s Time’s Alteration (not available online but summarized in this article), the answer appears to be no: Any community that stuck with the ‘old stile’ for Christmas probably would have stuck with the ‘old stile’ for New Year’s, which was March 25th on the Julian calendar or March 14th on the new calendar). (Other Continental countries had ‘returned’ to January 1st as New Year’s earlier, some such as the Venetian Republic doing so well prior to their 1582 adoption of the Gregorian Calendar)
Super confusing, huh? And also notable because of the social disunity it implies. As I noted in my new year’s post from last year, one of the remarkable aspects of contemporary new year’s celebrations is that the social unity they exhibit and reinforce given it is marked by disparate communities throughout the globe at the same time (staggered at one hour intervals, using a system that is also a mark of remarkable social unity). I also suggested that this social unity, together with the distinctive democracy implied in new year’s celebrations (reflecting the fact that political leaders have largely lost their ability to monkey with the calendar) and the historical consciousness (reflected in the common orientation to a cumulating year count that situates us relative to past and future events) is, paradoxically, a gift bequeathed to us by past empires that had instituted a series of key calendar reforms that brought us to our common civil calendar.
But if our New Year’s celebrations are a gift, Poole’s book helps remind us what was lost in producing this gift. To be sure, Poole shows that the transition to the Gregorian calendar wasn’t as contentious as was often reported during the late 19th and early 19th centuries (by urban upper classes who were biased towards the “irrational” rural lower classes), and that in particular rural mobs didn’t ignorantly protest to have eleven days restored to their lives that they felt were stolen from them.
But something was lost nonetheless. Here’s a taste of that loss, from a 1751 pamphlet Poole excerpts (pp.135-6):
Every common Farmer and Gardener, whose business is entirely regulated and governed by the Seasons, and for whose Benefit, Providence keeps, as it were, all the Laws of Nature rectified to the Exactness of a Day, by a kind of Habit, know without much Astronomy in his Head, that the Sun enters the Equinox always on or near the 9th of March; that the longest Day is about the 10th of June, &c., but unless he is accustomed to transpose his Ideas, he may not easily recollect… [It may be many years after before he can reasonably expect to know the Progress of the Seasons, by that kind of instinct, which makes him so sensible of it now.
So this was a tough adjustment, especially for farmers or gardeners who were much more attuned to the seasons than city dwellers were then— and certainly are now. But how big a deal would it really have been for a farmer or gardener to learn that under the Gregorian calendar, the spring equinox is eleven days later than the dates to which he was used?
Perhaps not such a big deal. But consider two points. First, there was an alternative. In particular, the argument for the switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian was that the former added leap years too frequently, such that it advanced 3 extra days every 400 years relative to the solar year. That’s why the Julian was 11 days ahead. And eventually, the calendar would have become really out of whack. But that eventually would occur in a really, really really long time, no? And if this very slow drift were really such a big deal, they could have just stopped adding leap years so frequently.
OK, but why would this “Corrected Julian Calendar” have been preferable? After all, Britain would not have the benefit of being aligned with the Continent, which had largely adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 (under Pope Gregory the XIII). That’s the social unity that we now cherish.
Sure, but the alternative would have minimized the wide array of short-term disruptions that occurred. And it would have retained a calendar that was more aligned with British seasons. Here’s the British astronomer John Brinkley, as quoted by Poole (p.136):
That our mode of reckoning time was made the same, as that of other nations, was doubtless a convenience. But it might have been more conformable to our climate and the original notions of the festival of Easter, which regulates the other movable fasts an festivals of the church, if the error that had already accumulated from the Julian Calendar had remained, and the Gregorian correction against future error had been only adopted.
The early climate of Italy might have principally induced Pope Gregory to bring back Easter to the regulations of the equinox; and it may have been a powerful motive in Russia for not adopting the Gregorian style, that by retaining and suffering the errors of the Julian Calendar to accumulate further, the fast of Lent and festival of Easter will fall at times more convenient in respect of their seasons.
The general point is this: The existing calendar (with its various ‘landmark’ dates throughout the year marking seasonal events and the opening of seasonal periods) had become associated with the local experience of seasons, to which most people (and certainly those involved in agriculture) were highly oriented. Among the major dislocations that Poole documented were the various fairs that made no sense 11 solar-year days earlier because the harvests they were associated with had not yet occurred.
And the more specific point concerned Easter, by which much of the religious calendar in Christendom was oriented. Brinkley is essentially suggesting that the Gregorian Calendar has a Mediterranean bias, one that is more problematic the further one goes from a Mediterranean climate. Pope Gregory may have had a good reason to move Easter backwards in time (it could be quite hot in Italy when Easter was late).1 But that rationale didn’t apply in Britain. And it clearly didn’t apply in Russia (which didn’t switch until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917)2.
What’s the larger point here?
Well, you can take away from this what you will. But my takeaway is that while we may now value the social unity that is produced by widespread adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, it carried a real cost, especially for rural, agriculturally-oriented people and communities. And one can even argue that it still reflects the interests of some communities (Mediterraneanites who don’t want Easter in the summer) over other (those closer to the Arctic, who might like Easter in the summer)
Finally, it’s interesting to wonder what would have happened had rural communities had more of a say in the decision to switch to the Gregorian Calendar. Poole’s account definitively punctures the myth of the ignorant mobs clamoring for their missing eleven days. But it also gives very little reason to think there would have been widespread popular support for the decision if it were put to a popular vote. So this reinforces the paradox I noted last year:
When we participate in New Year’s celebrations, and the gifts of social unity, democracy, and historical consciousness they convey, we are celebrating benefits imposed on us by empires in undemocratic fashion. And while we generally can’t see the costs associated with these benefits, the alternative, more seasonally-adapted ‘frozen Julian calendar’ gives us a sense of those costs and who has borne them on our behalf.
Happy 2025!!
You might wonder why, if (by Catholic and Protestant reckoning) Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox, it could ever drift forward into the summer. It’s always anchored on the vernal equinox, after all! (Passover, on which Easter was originally based and is also anchored around the first full moon of the spring, cannot drift into the summer). The answer is that since the Council of Nicaea of 325 CE that established the ecclesiastical calendar (as well as setting other standards for the newly Christianizing Roman Empire), the Catholic Church has recognized the vernal equinox not as it occurs in nature but as occurring on March 21st. So if March 21st drifts forward in the solar year, so will Easter.
I’m not sure why Brinkley thinks Russia is relevant given that the Orthodox Church continues to calculate Easter based on the Julian Calendar (with an alternative calculation that isn’t subject to the summer drift). (The Wikipedia page on the dating of Easter seems pretty good, but I’m certainly not expert enough to judge that.