St Edburg's Church - Bicester

Last Thursday was New Year’s Day according to the Gregorian Calendar now used by most of the world. Formerly dates were recorded as either BC (Before Christ) or AD (Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord). These days the year number is often marked as CE (Common Era) or BCE (before Common Era). This counting of years is based on calculations by a fifth century monk called Dionysius who adapted the Roman Julian calendar to count from the date he had calculated for the birth of Jesus. The Gregorian Calendar, introduced in 1582, modified the Julian Calendar, to catch up with actual solar time and to keep pace with it in the future by varying the number of Leap Years.

While we may think of the calendar as fixed and immutable, in fact it is not. All calendars are made by humans to regulate the measurement and recording of time. While the Gregorian Calendar and the Common Era may be used almost universally, many other calendars continue in use. The Jewish Calendar places us in 5786 and the Islamic Calendar in 1446 because both count from different starting points in time than the Gregorian Calendar.

Even uses of the Gregorian Calendar vary. Until 1752, England followed the Julian Calendar but observed New Year on March 25th. In that year Parliament adopted the Gregorian Calendar, missed out 11 days of September, and moved the New Year date to 1st January. Relics of the old system still survive. Our tax year still ends on 5th April because that is the old tax-year date of 25th March moved 11 days forward. 

The Church too does not start its year on 1st January but on the first Sunday of Advent on the Sunday closes to 30th November around four weeks before Christmas. The church year then builds around the great festivals of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Trinity to follow the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So 1stJanuary is not actually a Christian festival because it is New Year’s Day but because it marks the presentation of Christ in the Temple. 

Nonetheless, humanity likes to mark off time in manageable chunks and New Year is seen as a landmark in time. It is therefore a good time to reflect before Jesus on what we have done in the year that is just passed and what we should do in the new year that is beginning. It should be a time of meditation, prayer and reflection as well as a time to mark the passing of another year.

Christopher Young