I was cleaning out some backfiles the other day and came up on this Letters to the Editor exchange that erupted immediately after the original publication of the "Chances are it's Friday the 13th" piece in the LA Reader. The initiating correspondent is Ray Weschler, my brother, of subsequent Berkeley softball fame (see Cabinet #20), at the time a preternaturally pesky fifteen years old. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yEYk19EzBSbV-9f8gfLzbjBNgA14QBV_/view?usp=sharing
Meanwhile, why not notice how Sunday is stealing the limelight as we turn to March? The last four Sundays in March (10, 17, 24 and 31) are hosting in order: the start of Daylight Savings Time, St. Patrick's Day, Purim (these last two holidays are closely linked in calendar closeness and raucous spirit), and Easter. Easter in March? The Jewish calendar is celebrating its own Leap Year by repeating a month (Adar 2, starting on March II). As a result, while Easter is "early", Passover this year will end "late" - on the last day of April.
And while the solar Gregorian and the lunar Jewish calendars leap in different ways, in this decade they are linked digitally: from January through August beginning in 2020, the digits of the Jewish year add up to the last two digits of our secular calendar, as in this year: 5+7+ 8 + 4 = 24. After five years (5790 and 2030), that coincidence will disappear for a long time.
Did your research into calendars uncover the reason why we don't celebrate new years on the solstice? If it is solar coordinated (versus the lunar of Asia) new years should be around what is now Dec 21, or Christmas, rather than a week or two later. When did our calendar diverge from the solar cycle? (And I assume you discovered the 13-month calendar.)
Weschler here: I know about the 13-month calendar: 13 months of 28 days each and a transitional holiday there at the end, but that doesn't address the issue that the leap year regime solves. I had wondered as well about why the new year doesn't fall on the solstice (do you have any guesses?). What I do know is why Jesus has two separate birthdays in the Gospels. In some tellings he needs to be born right around the winter solstice to justify the "fact" that his main competitor in the messiah sweepstakes of the time, John (the Baptist), was born exactly six months before him, hence John's observation (according to Jesus's partisans) that as I shall grow smaller, he shall grow greater. But in other accounts, much is made of the fact that Jesus must have been born around March 20-21, which is to say during one of the few weeks in the year that shepherds would be spending the night out with their flocks, to protect the lambing ewes from predators. But why then? Astonishingly, (though perhaps not so much so), Babylonian and other such ancient astronomers carefully observing the stars (since what else did intelligent people have to do with their time at night in those days?) had noticed that the earth's axis wobbled on an approximately 24,000 year cycle (true fact!), such that the northward tilt tended to cycle through the encircling zodiac signs one at a time across 2,000-year passages. It was known and much was made of the fact around the year 0 that the tilt was leaving Aries and heading into Pisces, hence any messiah would ideally be born at the cusp between the two calendrical signs, which is to say March 20-21, which is also why the sign for Christ at the time and to an extent even today was a fish (and not a cross). { see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_of_the_ichthys_symbol } and why his disciples were known as fishermen of men and why there is so much other fish and water-crossing imagery in the Bible ("Oh, ye of little faith," etc). Two thousand years later it was similarly known that we were leaving the domain of Pisces and entering the Age of Aquarius, hence that musical. Don't get me started.
Wow. I did not know about Christianity and the Age of Fish. And yes, 13 months does not solve the leap year problem, just other calendar issues. What's awesome is that the Kodak company used it from 1928 to 1989! My question about the new year shift away from the solstice was genuine and not rhetorical. I've asked many calendar experts to no avail. Apparently the Romans had pegged the solstice to December 25th, so maybe they are to blame, but why?
I was cleaning out some backfiles the other day and came up on this Letters to the Editor exchange that erupted immediately after the original publication of the "Chances are it's Friday the 13th" piece in the LA Reader. The initiating correspondent is Ray Weschler, my brother, of subsequent Berkeley softball fame (see Cabinet #20), at the time a preternaturally pesky fifteen years old. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yEYk19EzBSbV-9f8gfLzbjBNgA14QBV_/view?usp=sharing
Meanwhile, why not notice how Sunday is stealing the limelight as we turn to March? The last four Sundays in March (10, 17, 24 and 31) are hosting in order: the start of Daylight Savings Time, St. Patrick's Day, Purim (these last two holidays are closely linked in calendar closeness and raucous spirit), and Easter. Easter in March? The Jewish calendar is celebrating its own Leap Year by repeating a month (Adar 2, starting on March II). As a result, while Easter is "early", Passover this year will end "late" - on the last day of April.
And while the solar Gregorian and the lunar Jewish calendars leap in different ways, in this decade they are linked digitally: from January through August beginning in 2020, the digits of the Jewish year add up to the last two digits of our secular calendar, as in this year: 5+7+ 8 + 4 = 24. After five years (5790 and 2030), that coincidence will disappear for a long time.
If ya’ got any time, read this doozy.
Did your research into calendars uncover the reason why we don't celebrate new years on the solstice? If it is solar coordinated (versus the lunar of Asia) new years should be around what is now Dec 21, or Christmas, rather than a week or two later. When did our calendar diverge from the solar cycle? (And I assume you discovered the 13-month calendar.)
Weschler here: I know about the 13-month calendar: 13 months of 28 days each and a transitional holiday there at the end, but that doesn't address the issue that the leap year regime solves. I had wondered as well about why the new year doesn't fall on the solstice (do you have any guesses?). What I do know is why Jesus has two separate birthdays in the Gospels. In some tellings he needs to be born right around the winter solstice to justify the "fact" that his main competitor in the messiah sweepstakes of the time, John (the Baptist), was born exactly six months before him, hence John's observation (according to Jesus's partisans) that as I shall grow smaller, he shall grow greater. But in other accounts, much is made of the fact that Jesus must have been born around March 20-21, which is to say during one of the few weeks in the year that shepherds would be spending the night out with their flocks, to protect the lambing ewes from predators. But why then? Astonishingly, (though perhaps not so much so), Babylonian and other such ancient astronomers carefully observing the stars (since what else did intelligent people have to do with their time at night in those days?) had noticed that the earth's axis wobbled on an approximately 24,000 year cycle (true fact!), such that the northward tilt tended to cycle through the encircling zodiac signs one at a time across 2,000-year passages. It was known and much was made of the fact around the year 0 that the tilt was leaving Aries and heading into Pisces, hence any messiah would ideally be born at the cusp between the two calendrical signs, which is to say March 20-21, which is also why the sign for Christ at the time and to an extent even today was a fish (and not a cross). { see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_of_the_ichthys_symbol } and why his disciples were known as fishermen of men and why there is so much other fish and water-crossing imagery in the Bible ("Oh, ye of little faith," etc). Two thousand years later it was similarly known that we were leaving the domain of Pisces and entering the Age of Aquarius, hence that musical. Don't get me started.
Wow. I did not know about Christianity and the Age of Fish. And yes, 13 months does not solve the leap year problem, just other calendar issues. What's awesome is that the Kodak company used it from 1928 to 1989! My question about the new year shift away from the solstice was genuine and not rhetorical. I've asked many calendar experts to no avail. Apparently the Romans had pegged the solstice to December 25th, so maybe they are to blame, but why?