ChrisWeigant.com

Please support ChrisWeigant.com this
holiday season!

From The Archives -- Why Christmas Is Not On The Solstice

[ Posted Thursday, December 23rd, 2010 – 18:51 UTC ]

[Program Note: This column originally ran three years ago, and every so often I dust it off and run it again, to allow me to do some Christmas shopping and whatnot. What with Part 2 of our "McLaughlin Awards" running tomorrow, there just wasn't time to put together a column today. Don't forget to check back here tomorrow (or over the weekend) for the second part of our year-end roundup, and for today I hope you'll enjoy my "go to" Christmas column. Thanks again to everyone who has donated in our 2010 Holiday Pledge Drive, allowing us to exceed our fundraising goal. And hope you've all got your shopping and wrapping done, too.]

 

When is Christmas? And why?

These are questions guaranteed to get you funny looks when you pop them, especially in a gathering of wassail-soaked relatives. But if you're tired of hearing the seemingly-eternal "this is what Uncle Fred did when he was twelve" stories, and you're leery of bringing up politics with your kin from Outer Podunk, then it's at least a conversation-starter that's somewhat neutral. Plus, you can reaffirm your nearest-and-dearests' image of you as a latte-sipping fruitcake who moved away from the glory of the heartland and now lives on (say it with an embarrassed whisper) the coast.

OK, I should stop editorializing here. After all, the subject at hand is Christmas.

Now, the first thing that has to be pointed out is that absolutely nobody alive today knows what day Christ was born on. [Note: I am postulating here that Christ did exist, was born, and that the Gospel stories of his birth are fairly accurate. That's a lot to postulate, but we don't want to make the Outer Podunkians' heads explode, so we've got to start from some sort of common ground.] And, from the Gospel of Luke, we read that the shepherds were "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." From this, we can probably guess that Jesus wasn't born in midwinter, but more likely in the spring or fall, as that's when the shepherds of that time took their flocks to the fields (and not in the middle of the winter). Meaning that setting "Christmas" on December 25th was likely about as accurate as the Emperor Constantine's wife going to the Holy Land 300 years after Christ was there, and then pointing at the ground and saying "this is where some event in the Bible took place."

But that's another story.

Adding to all of this confusion is the differing concepts of a "calendar" and a "year." The first people who came up with a calendar (and helpfully wrote it down in something easier to translate than, say, Stonehenge) were the Egyptians. Their yearly cycle revolved around one key date: the spring flooding of the Nile River. [Now, while it is very tempting, I refuse to make a "De Nile ain't just a river in Egypt" quip here, because that joke stopped being funny a long time ago.] Since their entire agricultural year began with this yearly event, they needed a way to predict it. Their magicians came up with a stunning idea which we still use today (albeit for a different reason). Since their whole number system was based on 12 (most number systems are based on 10 for the simple reason that that's how many fingers we have... but the Egyptians also counted an extra 2 -- one for each whole hand), they figured the year had to be a perfect multiple of 12, and so came up with 360 divisions of the Earth's path around the sun. Easy to remember, easy to use, and it divides cleanly with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and, of course, 12. Problem solved. It's such a convenient system everyone still uses it today, from math teachers to skateboarders -- as the number of degrees in a circle.

Except that it didn't work. It was off by a bit. So the Egyptians, who had twelve months of 30 days each just threw up their hands and added 5 feast days to the end of the year.

Now, "the end of the year" is just as fluid a concept as any in the calendar business. Most civilizations which followed used the Egyptian concept of spring being the beginning of the year. Makes sense, since that's when everything is born anew. The Romans even used this system, which is also still kind of in use today. If you start your calendar in March, then count forward, you have July as the fifth month (which was originally called Quintillis), August as the sixth (originally Sextillis), and then a numerical run of September (seven), October (eight), November (nine) and December (ten). January and February didn't even originally have names, and seeing as how they're the worst months of the year, weather-wise, it's not surprising.

Julius Caesar (and Augustus, after him) tinkered with the calendar even more, as it became apparent that 365 days for each year wasn't quite right. Julius added the concept of a "leap year" every four years, and because he was so proud of his new calendar he had to go and name a whole month after himself. Augustus kept the Julian calendar intact, except he also named a month after himself as well.

The concept of "Christmas" evolved over the centuries as well. Initially celebrated on January 6th, by the time of Constantine (fourth century AD), the church had learned a valuable lesson in marketing (the "new and improved" concept). The problem back then with converting pagans was that even after you went to all the trouble of converting them, they still wanted to celebrate their feasts on their traditional days. And the traditional midwinter festival day was always the solstice. Now, in 46 BC, when Julian was tinkering around with the calendar, the winter solstice had been on December 25th. So everyone was already used to celebrating on that day. The church came up with a compromise: a celebration lasting from 12/25 to 1/6 -- the "twelve days of Christmas." Eventually, they just kind of gave up and started celebrating Christmas on December 25th, and everyone was happy.

For a while, that is. But Julius hadn't gotten it quite right, either. The problem is, the year and the day have nothing to do with each other, astronomically-speaking. They just don't add up very easily. By the 1500s, anyone bright enough to measure the sun's daily movement with a stick in the ground noticed that the solstice was slowly moving. Although the feast day was on the 25th, the actual solstice had moved. If something wasn't done, pretty soon the whole calendar was going to slowly rotate through the actual year. So Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, changed things around again. His new-and-improved calendar has leap years, but every year that ended in 00 was not to be a leap year. Except for every year evenly divisible by 400, which does have a leap day. Which means that February 29th, 2000 was a day that only comes once every four hundred years -- not just every 4 years, or even "doesn't come" every 100 years.

This is convoluted, but it actually works pretty well. It won't be off by a whole day for thousands of years, so it's close enough for government work, as they say. The problem was getting the actual governments to accept it. Now, since the Pope put his stamp of approval on it, Catholic Europe changed over pretty quickly in the late 1500s. But Protestant Europe took another couple hundred years to get around to it. England (and her colony, America) didn't switch over until 1752. Imagine the confusion in Europe for this period -- when crossing from one country to another, you didn't just change time zones, you entered a whole new calendar zone! In any case, the Gregorian calendar is the one we still use today.

The changeover had other effects as well, and didn't go over easily. Laborers, for instance, got paid wages by the month. But when Gregory made ten days in October disappear, their employers docked their wages and didn't pay them for a full month's time. Even the riots this caused were nothing compared to the wars (yes, actual wars) fought over when exactly to celebrate Easter.

But, eventually, the Gregorian calendar was accepted. Another interesting footnote for Americans is that when we switched over in the 1700s, George Washington changed his birthday. Some people (my mother's one of them) get annoyed by the concept of one "Presidents' Day" in February, instead of celebrating both Washington's and Lincoln's actual birthday. But Washington himself didn't celebrate his birthday on his "birthday." Washington was born February 11th, 1732. But when the calendar switched in America, there were eleven days' difference, so he changed it to February 22nd. When Americans started celebrating his birthday as a holiday (which they did while he was still alive), some celebrated on the 11th, and some on the 22nd. And you think we're politically divided today!

In any case, through Gregory's tinkering, the solstices were set on the 21st/22nd (they move around slightly, since they don't pay any attention to "leap years," while we do). But because everyone by the 1700s had forgotten about the pagan solstice and were now happily celebrating Christmas on the 25th, it stayed where it was.

So the concept of Christmas started by the church taking a pagan holiday, essentially filing the serial numbers off of it, announcing it "new and improved," and proclaiming it as Jesus' birthday. By the time they had to reset the calendar, nobody cared much about the solstice so it was allowed to slip three or four days. Christians worldwide are joyously celebrating the birth of Christ, everybody agrees on the date to do so, and a merry Christmas is had by all.

 

[You know, after reading all that, I'm not so sure that it is all that neutral a subject. Better talk about weather and sports with the Outer Podunkians, just to be safe.]

 

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

 

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

 

6 Comments on “From The Archives -- Why Christmas Is Not On The Solstice”

  1. [1] 
    Michale wrote:

    His new-and-improved calendar has leap years, but every year that ended in 00 was not to be a leap year. Except for every year evenly divisible by 400, which does have a leap day. Which means that February 29th, 2000 was a day that only comes once every four hundred years -- not just every 4 years, or even "doesn't come" every 100 years.

    Fizzbin, anyone??? :D

    . And the traditional midwinter festival day was always the solstice. Now, in 46 BC, when Julian was tinkering around with the calendar, the winter solstice had been on December 25th. So everyone was already used to celebrating on that day. The church came up with a compromise: a celebration lasting from 12/25 to 1/6 -- the "twelve days of Christmas." Eventually, they just kind of gave up and started celebrating Christmas on December 25th, and everyone was happy.

    So, if I understand you right, you are saying that everyone was celebrating Christ's birthday BEFORE Christ was born???

    And people wonder why I am agnostic.... :^/

    Good column, CW... :D

    Michale
    209.....

  2. [2] 
    db wrote:

    I had heard that the 25th was celebrated as the day we could be sure the days would not keep getting shorter & shorter until there was no daylight left.

  3. [3] 
    Chris Weigant wrote:

    Michale -

    Hah! Actually, earlier in that paragraph, when talking about the church, was:

    "by the time of Constantine (fourth century AD)..."

    That's when the church did its tinkering...

    As for 2/29/2000, the rule goes like this:

    Leap day added, because it is a leap year (every 4 years).
    BUT leap day subtracted, because it is a 100 year (ends in 00)
    BUT leap day added back, because it is a once-in-400-years event.

    Because it just looked like a normal leap year, not many people noticed this, but it was one of the most unique things about the year 2000....

    db -

    Welcome to the site! Your first comment was held for moderation, but from now, you should be able to post your comments and see them appear instantly, just FYI (unless you post more than one link within your message, which are held to prevent comment spam).

    Yeah, the solstice (both summer and winter) are the easiest days for the ancient shamans to have figured out. Pretty much all you need is a stick in the dirt, and a lot of patience. Watch the shadows, and when the noon shadow is farthest north, you've hit the winter solstace (sun is farthest south). In the northern hemisphere, at least...

    -CW

  4. [4] 
    Michale wrote:

    Leap day added, because it is a leap year (every 4 years).
    BUT leap day subtracted, because it is a 100 year (ends in 00)
    BUT leap day added back, because it is a once-in-400-years event.

    Yea, like I said.. Fizzbin...

    Each person gets 6 cards, except the player on the dealer’s right, who gets 7. The second card dealt is turned face up, except at night, when it is face down. (Dark or night is defined as being the sunset time and before the sunrise time of the city in its own time zone.) On Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday, the cards in the pile cannot help you, but can only hurt you. On Friday, they can only help you. On Saturday and Tuesday, they can both help and hurt you.

    :D

    Michale....
    211

  5. [5] 
    db wrote:

    Thank you CW,

    I've imagined the terror our remote ancestors felt as the days got shorter & shorter & the "world" got colder & colder. They'd have no astronomical explanations to fall back on & no convincing argument that the trend wouldn't continue.

    But then:

    Day 1: It's stopped!
    Day 2: Are you sure?
    Day 3: YES REALLY!

    making Dec 25th the perfect day for celebrating; remembering that ancient man did not have baseball's Spring Training to remind him of the eternal renewal of the world.

    Your arguments about conflicting calenders is quite accurate & it was 1918 before Russia caught up to the rest of Europe.

    So on to Boxing Day, the holiday we spend sleeping off/cleaning up the day before.

  6. [6] 
    Michale wrote:

    So on to Boxing Day, the holiday we spend sleeping off/cleaning up the day before.

    Isn't that the day in Springfield where they go about and kill all the snakes they can find???

    Michale.....

Comments for this article are closed.