Pickled corn in a Crock

As the season of Christmas starts, you’ll definitely feel the spirit of gift-giving in the air. Soon, homes will be decorated with colorful Christmas ornaments and decorations. Christmas trees will be put up and decorated with Christmas balls, angels, garlands, lights etc. Under it, different kinds of Christmas gifts and gift baskets will be arranged. It is indeed Christmas season. But there’s a deeper history behind the celebration of Christmas, which includes some historical facts as well as some religious stories.  How Christmas a popular celebration and how it finally was declared on the 25th of December is a nice story in itself. Today we’ll talk about the History of Old Christmas Day which is an important part of our present-day Calendar system too.

 

The Old Christmas Day

Centuries ago, the Christmas celebration used to be held on the 6th of January. The popular day of 25th December was not Christmas day before the Gregorian Calendar was adopted. This was because the old calendar that people used at the time had a different number of days compared to the Gregorian calendar we use at present. So, Christmas was celebrated on the date equivalent to January 6th.

Pope Gregory XIII was the one who introduced the Gregorian calendar, but it was not accepted by Europeans fully so many parts of the country celebrated Christmas on different days. The main dilemma began in early sixteenth century when many Europeans realized a small but serious problem in the calendar system. The calendar system they were following was named Julian calendar which was named after the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar. Though the calendar became popular the problem arose when each year the calendar had a difference amount of 11 minutes and 14 seconds than the actual solar year; It seemed like a small error but actually it caused a serious gap between the dates.

The calendar used by the Romans before Julius Caesar was based on the phases of the moon. This calendar was so inaccurate that Julius Caesar was advised by astronomers to base the calendar on the revolution of the sun. Thus, the Julian calendar was instituted which had 365 and ¼ days in a year which in turn, is composed of twelve months.

The Julian calendar still proved inaccurate, and many scholars tried to fix the flaw in the calendar system. It was in the year 1545 that Pope Paul III was proposed to find a solution for the calendar dilemma by The Council of Trent. However, it took the scholars 40 years to come to any solution. A Jesuit Astronomer named Christopher Clavius gave an acceptable plan to reform the calendar. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced further changes to the calendar and gave birth to the Gregorian calendar.

From past experience and with great research the astronomers and scholars calculated the true length of the solar year, and the final Gregorian Callender was formed, which had ten days and eleven minutes and fifteen seconds less than the Julian calendar.

Due to the change in the calendar system the spring Equinox came back to March 21st on which it occurred at the time of the Council of Nicaea. The calendar also declared 1st January as the official New Year’s Day in order to standardize a beginning to the European Year.