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The fact that the work week begins on Monday causes a great many people to think of that as the first day of the week, and leads to the following children's puzzle (which I mention only because it trapped me neatly the first time I heard it).
You ask your victim to pronounce t-o, t-o-o, and t-w-o, one at a time, thinking deeply between questions. In each case he says (wondering what's up) "tooooo."
Then you say, "Now pronounce the second day of the week" and his face clears up, for he thinks he sees the trap. He is sure you are hoping he will say "toooosday" like a lowbrow. With exaggerated precision, therefore, he says "tyoosday."
At which you look gently puzzled and say, "Isn't that strange? I always pronounce it Monday."
The month, being tied to the Moon, began, in ancient times, at a fixed phase. In theory, any phase will do. The month can start at each full Moon, or each first quarter, and so on. Actually, the most logical Way is to begin each month with the new Moon-that is, on that evening when the first sliver of the growing crescent makes itself visible immediately after sunset. To any logical primitive, a new Moon is clearly being created at that time and the month. should start then.
Nowadays, however, the month is freed of the Moon and is tied to the year, which is in turn based on the Sun.
In our calendar, in ordinary years, the first month begins on the first day of the year, the second month on the 32nd day of the year, the third month on the 60th day of the year, the fourth month on the 91st day of the year, and so on-quite regardless of the phases of the Moon. (In a leap year, all the months from the third onward start a day late because of the existence of February 29.
But that brings us to the year. When does that begin and why?
Primitive agricultural societies must have been first aware of the year as a succession of seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter were the morning, midday, evening and night of the year and, as in the case of the day, there seemed two equally qualified candidates for the post of begi
The begi
Should that not also be the begi
With the development of astronomy, the begi
Some societies chose one equinox as the begi
Since, according to the Gospels, Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection occurred during the Passover season (the Last Supper was a Passover seder), Good Friday and Easter are also tied to the vernal equinox (see Chap ter I).
The Hebrews also celebrated a New Year's Day on the first two days of Tishri (which falls at about the autumnal equinox), and this became the more important of the two occasions. It is celebrated by Jews today as "Rosh Hashonah" ("head of the year"), the familiarly known "Jewish New Year."
A much later example of. a New Year's Day in con nection with the autumnal equinox came in co
There are two important solar events in addition to the equinoxes. After the vernal equinox, the noonday Sun con tinues to rise higher and higher until it reaches a maximum height on June 21, which is the summer solstice (see Chapter 4), and this day, in consequence, has the longest daytime period of the year.
The height of the noonday Sun declines thereafter until it reaches the position of the autumnal equinox. It then continues to decline farther and farther fill it reaches a minimum height on December 21, the winter solstice and the shortest daytime period of the year.
The summer solstice is not of much significance. "Mid summer Day" falls at about the summer solstice (die tradi tional English day is June 24). This is a time for gaiety and carefree joy, even folly. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is an example of a play devoted to the kind of not-to-be-taken-seriously fun of the season, and the phrase "midsummer madness" may have arisen similarly.
The winter solstice is a much more serious affair. The Sun is declining from day to day, and to a primitive so ciety, not sure of the invariability of astronomical laws, it might well appear that this time, the Sun will continue its decline and disappear forever so that spring will never come again and all life will die.
Therefore, as the Sun's decline slowed from day to day and came to a halt and began to turn on December 21, there must have been great relief and joy which, in the end, became ritualized into a great religious festival, marked by gaiety and licentiousness.
The best-known examples of this are the several days of holiday among the Romans at this season of the year. The holiday was in honor of Saturn (an ancient Italian god of agriculture) and was therefore called the "Satumalia." It was a time of feasting and of giving of presents; of good will to men, even to the point where slaves were given temporary freedom while their masters waited upon them.
There was also a lot of drinking at Satumalia parties.
In fact, the word "saturnalian" has come to mean dis solute, or characterized by unrestrained merriinent.
There is logic, then, in begi
The Romans had, traditionally, begun their year on March 15 (the "Ides of March"), which was intended to fall upon the vernal equinox originally but which, thanks to the sloppy way in which the Romans maintained their calendar, eventually moved far out of synchronization with the equinox. Caesar adjusted matters and moved the beg ning of the year to January 1 instead, placing it nearly at the winter solstice.
This habit of begi
The begi
Eventually, though, Christianity stole Mithraic thunder by establishing the birth of Jesus on December 25 (there is no biblical authority for this), so that the period of the winter solstice has come to mark the birth of both the Son and the Sun. There are some present-day moralists (of whom I am one) who find something unpleasantly remi niscent of the Roman Satumalia in the modem secular celebration of Christmas.
But where do the years begin? It is certainly convenient to number the years, but where do we start the numbers?
In ancient times, when the sense of history was not highly developed, it was sufficient to begin numbering the years with the accession of the local king or ruler. The number ing would begin over again with each new kin. Where a city has an a
When the Bible dates things at all, it does it in this ma
And in Luke 2:2, the time of the taxing, during which Jesus was born, is dated only as follows: "And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria."
Unless you have accurate lists of kings and magistrates and know just how many years each was in power and how to relate the list of one region with that of another, you are in trouble, and it is for that reason that so many ancient dates are uncertain even (as I shall soon explain) a date as important as that of the birth of Jesus.
A much better system would be to pick some important date in the past (preferably one far enough in the past so that you don't have to deal with negative-numbered years before that time) and number the years in progres sion thereafter, without ever starting over.
The Greeks made use of the Olympian Games for that purpose. This was celebrated every four years so that a four-year cycle was an "Olympiad." The Olympiads were numbered progressively, and the year itself was the Ist, 2nd, 3rd or 4th year of a particular Olympiad.
This is needlessly complicated, however, and in the time following Alexander the Great something better was in troduced into the Greek world. The ancient East was being fought over by Alexander's generals, and one of them, Seleucus, defeated another at Gaza. By this victory Seleu cus was confirmed in his rule over a vast section of Asia.