Notebook
What links the start of the tax year in the UK with the feast of the Annunciation? “Nothing” might be the instinctive reaction, but it would be incorrect. Once upon a time in mediaeval England, the New Year (and the start of the tax year) coincided with feast of the Annunciation on March 25. But the Gregorian reform adopted in the UK in 1752 resulted in 11 days being dropped from the calendar, bringing the tax year start-date to April 5. In 1800 this unusual ‘New Year’s Day’ moved forward another day to make up for the lack of a leap year day in 1800. Thus the start of the UK tax year was eventually set at April 6. (The Irish tax year followed suit until 2001.) So, remarkably, only in Britain is a link to the Lord’s conception preserved by the revenue authorities!
Calendar
You might wonder how the calendar managed to lose 11 days a few centuries ago. The reason is fascinating. The original calendar was devised by Julius Casesar in the year 45 BC and christened the Julian calendar after him. Under this arrangement, a solar year (the time it takes for the earth to move around the sun) was reckoned to be 365.25 days long, so to keep the calendar year on track with the solar year, a leap year day was added every time the year was divisible by four.
Unfortunately by the 16th Century it had been discovered that this arrangement was not quite right; the calendar year had drifted from the solar year. This had an effect on the date of Easter, which was supposed to be linked to the Spring equinox on March 21 and should occur after the equinox, when day is longer than night. The difference between calendars meant the date sometimes fell before the equinox, which had to be corrected.
Pope Gregory XIII proposed a solution in 1582: instead of the year being 365.25 days long, he proposed it be measured as 365.2425 days long, just slightly less than the Julian calendar measurement. He put this into practice by ordering that in the years starting a century, only those where the first two digits are divisible by four would be leap years. So by Gregory’s calculations, the year AD 1500 was not a leap year, but AD 1600 was.
Upshot
The upshot of all this was that days had to be dropped from the calendar to put the calendar year back in line with the solar year. So in the countries where the Pope’s word help sway, ten days were dropped from the year 1582: Thursday October 4 was immediately followed by Friday October 15. It took longer for every country to adopt this new ‘Gregorian’ calendar, with the UK only adopting it in 1752 and Russia in 1918. To this day, the Eastern Church still follows the Julian Calendar to set its date of Easter, which in 2021 falls on this Sunday, May 2. (Happy Easter to Eastern Orthodox brethren!)
A positive live-streaming legacy
May I make a post-pandemic prediction? I predict that live-streamed Masses will be a part of parish life from now on. Perhaps they should always have been, as a means of keeping housebound people in touch with Church life. Up to this, though, many would not have had the necessary equipment. But now (almost) everyone has.
In addition, I predict that many funerals will continue to be live-streamed in the future, as a means of including family members who are abroad and unable to travel home in time.
These possibilities might well be one positive legacy of these strange times.
A host of new designated ministers
In the past, I struggled to persuade parishioners to take on the ministry of Holy Communion. People felt unworthy or unsuited and often suggested other, equally hesitant, people for the role. Then, during the pandemic, the parish where I serve made a dramatic change: every person who received Communion at Sunday Mass was designated a minister. Each got the facility to bring Communion to those at home — and many availed of it. As a result, vulnerable or housebound people received Communion regularly, when otherwise they couldn’t. I hope this continues to be the case — another positive outcome of these times.