Keeping Old Christmas Day

The Roman calendar was organized by the phases of the moon until the rule of Julius Caesar. Keeping the calendar by this method lead to a great deal of inaccuracies year to year. Julius Caesar looked a method of marking the year from his astronomers. They suggested a calendar that was center on the sun. Julius degreed that that year consisted on three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days. The year was then divided up into twelve months. The prior month of Quirinus became known as July in order to celebrate the Julian reform of the whole calendar.

The major flaw in the Julian calendar was it was off buy eleven minutes and 15 seconds in its accuracy of keeping time by the movement of the sun. Despite the addition of a leap year this meant that was an extra day on the calendar every one hundred and twenty eight years.

Pope Gregory the XIII in 1582 instituted reform that took the extra eleven minutes and fifteen seconds off the calendar and the extra 10 days that had been created by the extra minutes in the old calendar. This calendar known as the Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout much of Europe.

England being very much of a Protestant bent at the time; still kept the old Julian calendar. The 25^th of March was New Year's day rather than January 1^st. Even into the middle of the eighteenth century England marked time 11 days ahead of the rest of the Christian world.

In 1751 parliament passed the Calendar Act which made Britain and all the rest of the Empire accept the Julian Calendar as the way to mark the year. Riot broke out as many felt that in some ways the government was stealing eleven days of the lives of the common folk.

Old Christmas day was celebrated on January 6^th by most of the British. It took a while for the new date of Christmas to be accepted. Christmas it had been reduced from a hearty feast and yuletide remembrance to at best a sober Church holiday by the protestant radicalism in much of England. It took a long time for celebratory nature of the Celts; to return the new Christmas day to its yuletide finery. Many English still refer to January 6^th as old Christmas day.

January 6^th is the start of Epiphany in both the Eastern and Western churches. The major difference between the feasts in these Churches is what the liturgical period commutates. In Western churches it is a celebration of the coming of the three wise men. In the Eastern Church it celebrated the baptism of Christ and the Nativity of Christ.

Those parts of the Eastern church that still follow the Julian calendar celebrate Christmas Feast on January 6^th and Epiphany starts on January1 9^th. The date of December 25^th in the western church was at first the marking of the feast of the nativity that marked the old celebration of the 12 days of Christmastide or later the twelve days of Christmas. This would have meant to last liturgical day of remembrance of the nativity would have been January 5^th. Remembering the coming of the Magi on January 6th, gave to many cultural tardyons of gift giving to remember the gifts to Christ given by the wise men.

A custom in many Christian cultures is the Epiphany cake. A trinket or bean is hidden in a cake. The cake is served and the person finding the item hidden inside is made the king of the feast. Some parish churches do this tradition for the children of the church .There are two trinkets so there can be a king and queen of the feast.

http://www.mystical-www.co.uk/xmas.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~gcmastra/mail/calendar.html

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

http://anglicansonline.org/special/Epiphany/epiphany.html

http://wf-f.org/epiphany.html