Timey's Calendarium

[timey]

Some of you may have noticed the new module on the bottom left of the screen headed "Timey's Calendarium". This will show today's date in some selected calendars with links to info about those calendars. I will also be posting some facts now and then about specific dates. For instance, which day of the year is leap day, how is Chinese new year worked out and just why is Easter so early this year? The answers to these and other calendrical questions will appear here so, if you are interested, watch this space.

[Ck]

oh, sounds good.

[timey]

Well, you'll have to wait until Easter and leap day for those articles, but as Chinese new year has just passed and won't be back till next January, I might do an article on that soon.

[Alpha]

Yeah, i noticed that.

[timey]

We saw in a recent Morningstarr Quiz that Chinese new year can fall any time between around January 21st and February 21st. But why those dates? Well, as you may or may not be aware, the Chinese calendar is a lunar calendar, i.e. it follows the phases of the moon, with each month starting on the day of a new moon. However, as 12 lunar months are only approximately 354 days, each new year would fall earlier and earlier every year. After around 15 years Chinese new year would take place in July! So, to counteract this, an extra month is added every two to three years. This means that is it actually a lunisolar calendar, as it keeps in step with the solar year.

The mechanism for deciding when these extra months are added is complex, but to cut a long story short, the new year should occur at the second new moon following the winter solstice (as the solstice must happen in the eleventh month). This works out as sometime between the dates mentioned above.

This year, Chinese new year was on 7th February. Next year it will come forward to January 26th but the following year, 2010, it will be on February 14th, i.e. 13 lunar months after the previous one.

[Ck]

Why do the Chinese have a different New Year to the rest of us?

[timey]

Why do the Chinese have a different New Year to the rest of us?

Because our calendar has Western/Christian origins and the Chinese have had their own calendar for thousands of years, before our calendar (the Gregorian and before that the Julian) was even invented. They only adopted ours as their official calendar in the 1940s but still use their own one to determine certain events, the most important of which is the new year.

There are other types of calendar from other cultures as well, e.g. the Jewish and Islamic calendars, that are used alongside the Gregorian one in many countries around the world, and they also have their own new years. The Islamic one gets earlier every year (this year Jan 10 and Dec 29) and the Jewish one happens in September or October.

[Ck]

Ahhh, I just thought we had New Year on January the first as it was the first day of the calender year. We do all follow the same calender don't we, like China has a January with 31 days in and a February with 28 and 29 every 4 years?

[timey]

Ahhh, I just thought we had New Year on January the first as it was the first day of the calender year. We do all follow the same calender don't we, like China has a January with 31 days in and a February with 28 and 29 every 4 years?

Yes, most countries now follow the Gregorian calendar, i.e. the months are all the same with the same number of days etc.

BTW, new year here wasn't always January 1st. England and colonies (including USA) had new year on March 25th until 1752. So, you would have March 24th 1750, followed by March 25th 1751. January 1st was adopted in 1752. Scotland had adopted January 1st as its new year in 1600.

[Ck]

Wow, I just thought it'd been like that forever


Wonder if we'll see a major change in our lifetime?