Misleading Traditions

It is common for people to justify things by reference to tradition. In Scotland we have the traditional New Year celebrations. So it may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that it has only been at the beginning of January since 1752. The reasons behind this are a little convoluted but go something like this, based on information from The Calendar by David Ewing Duncan.

In early Roman times (753 BC was year 1 in the Roman calendar) the year had 10 months and began in March, "which opened the farming and fighting season". Anyone familiar with the Latin numbering system will notice that the last 6 months are named after the numbers :-

700 BCE - January and February were added to the end of the year by King Numa bringing the number of months to the familiar 12 though still with the old names.

153 BCE - New Year moved to 1st January on the basis that that was when "the strength of the sun was perceived to be returning" but this change was not always followed.

46 BCE - Julius Caesar introduced his calendar reforms, to get the calendar back in line with the seasons, including making 1st January the official start of the year to bring it "nearer to the winter solstice". The 12 months were alternately 30 and 31 days long, "with the exception of February, which under Caesar's system had 29 days in a normal year and 30 in a leap year". The Senate later renamed Quintilius to Julius (July) in his honour.

8 BCE - Emperor Augustus institutes calendar reform to fix an error with leap years. The Senate honours the emperor by renaming Sextilis to Augustus but "the Senate decided that Augustus's new month, with only 30 days, should not have fewer days than the month honouring Julius Caesar, with 31 days". They pinched a day from February and re-arranged the lengths of the final four months. Bang goes your neat alternating system.

1155 CE - "the English Crown determined to revert to the presumed early Roman system" the date chosen was 25th March.

1582 CE - 10 days removed from October in order to institute the calendar reforms of Pope Gregory XIII. Only Italy, Spain, Portugal and Savoy make the initial deadline.

1600 CE - Scotland adopts the Gregorian calendar but England and Wales do not. Just think of the fun, two concurrent calendars.

1752 CE - Gregorian calendar finally reaches the rest of Great Britain, reform moves New Year back to 1st January. This reform was achieved by removing eleven days from the calendar but the financial bods didn't fancy losing 11 days interest so the financial year stuck to the old new year but moved 11 days from 25th March putting it on 5th April.

1800 CE - a 12th skipped Julian leap day in 1800 moved the start of the financial year another day which is the reason that it starts on April 6th.

Having a holiday at Christmas is traditional, but it was only in 1958 that Christmas become an official holiday in Scotland. Due to the Reformation, Christmas had ceased to be a holiday in 1690. Christians banning Christmas because of its pagan connections or just because they didn't like the idea of people enjoying themselves ? Bizarre. How old does something have to be in order to be considered "traditional"?