When the Year Began March 25

Happy New Year! In medieval Europe, the Christian era (and each year within it) began the day the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would become pregnant: March 25, Lady Day, exactly nine months before Christmas. Split between two years, March counted as the first month on the Julian calendar then in use. That made September, October, November, and December months seven through ten, or septem, octo, novem, and decem in Latin.

A slight miscalculation of leap years gradually threw that calendar out of sync with nature and the sun. By 1582, it was ten days off. That year Pope Gregory reset the calendar to scrap the ten extra days, start the year on Jan. 1, and fine-tune the leap year formula.

Human nature and politics haven’t changed much. Then as now, anything my rival or enemy proposes, I must reject. While Roman Catholic countries promptly adopted the Gregorian calendar, Protestant nations decried it as popish. Britain and its colonies kept the archaic one until 1752. March 25 remained the legal first day of the year, while some began to greet the new year informally in January.
 
Imagine historians interpreting English sources from the 1600s. Was a letter dated March 10, 1668, written before or after one dated November of that year? The ten- or later eleven-day difference between England and most of the Continent muddied diplomatic correspondence. Imagine George Washington revising his date of birth from Feb. 11, 1731, under Britain’s old calendar to Feb. 22, 1732, under the new one. He celebrated both birthdays to the end of his life.

​Image: Johannes Von Gmunden, calendar, 1496.