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The Western World's Quest for a Calendar

© Rachelle Hughes

The ringing in of a new year has been celebrated for over 4000 years in every culture of the world. But it is only for the past 2047 years that January 1 has been known as the first day of the year in the majority of European and the Western cultures. Throughout history the movement of the moon, the stars and the seasons have established the rituals of social, religious and family life. So, as we approach a new year it may be interesting to reflect on the origin of the calendar. For some this little bit of information on the evolution to the calendar may actually unlock the doors to researching dates in personal family histories.

Our current calendar was created by the merging of several cultural and calendar philosophies. The idea of creating a systematic measurement of time into days, months and years was first formulated by the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian cultures. These two civilizations were sophisticated enough in their agricultural, learning and demographics to see a need for the measurement of time. Yet, mainly they saw a need to create a central time for their large populations to celebrate religious festivals. Their New Year began with the first new moon after the Vernal Equinox on the first day of spring. These early calendar inventors faced an enormous task in defining months, days, years.

During the fifth century the Babylonians divided the day into 24 hour segments, even though they had no accurate way of measuring minutes and seconds. At first, the sun was used to measure the passing of the time during the day. In many cultures, such as the Hebrew culture, the beginning of the next day started at sunset. Therefore, all Holy days were observed at sunset. This tradition continues today with Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, etc. But the Roman astronomers recognized these rudimentary methods as inaccurate. For years their emperors tampered with the calendar (usually to further political or religious agendas) causing the calendar to become out of sync with the sun. Around 150 BC the water clock came into use by the Greeks and Romans. This device was improved in the middle ages by using weighted gears. But it was not until the discovery that a pendulum swings at a constant rate by Galileo in 1581 that the smallest increments of time were measured precisely.

What is a month? This is where the dates of our ancestors births, marriages, etc. Can become confusing. As Europe developed a universal calendar, there were times when one country would be using one calendar and another country another. Sometimes different calendars were used from city to city. A month is based on the rotation of the moon around the earth. Once a new moon was observed, a new month began. Through careful observation of the moon, the length of a lunar cycle was found to be about 27 days. Originally the duty of watching for the new moon fell to the religious leaders in the community. They were expected to declare the new moon. This practice is where the word calendar comes from. The Latin word "calare" means to declare and the first day of the month was called calends. A calendar is a chart which records all of the calends.

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