Is it still Christmas?

There are three things you should never discuss: Politics, religion, and Jeremy Clarkson. So, let’s talk about religion.

I was listening to BBC Radio Three over Christmas, because that is what we writers tend to do. Well I don’t know about anybody else, but it’s what I do anyway. When you are trying to think of words, or not think of words, nothing else does the job better. I cannot work to whatever passes for music these days, but a bit of Schubert playing in the background is nice and soothing.

One of the presenters was talking to a Russian correspondent who was spending Christmas Day somewhere in the middle of nowhere, about fifty miles from Moscow. He mentioned that the 25th of December is just an ordinary working day in Russia. They have Christmas Day on the 7th of January. Because of course they do.

I had a suspicion that I knew the reason why, but I had never heard the story, so I looked it up, what we writers call, doing research. What other people call, googling it. As I had guessed, it is because the Russian Orthodox Church is still working to the Julian Calendar, but why?

We of course work to the Gregorian Calendar, as decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, but before you start sneering at our eastern cousins for lagging behind the times, you might want to bear in mind that here in Blighty, we stuck with the old calendar for nearly two hundred years. Protestant Britain, and other parts of Europe, were not going to be bossed around by a man with a funny hat in Rome, so for almost two centuries, the two calendars were used simultaneously, causing no end of problems. If you thought the VHS versus Betamax debate dragged on a bit, it was nothing compared to this.

Just to add to the confusion, some countries began their new year on the 1st of January, but people working to the Church calendar started their year on Christmas Day. Which Christmas Day? Well that depends on which calendar you were working to. To add to this farce, there is nothing so botched that the British Civil Service cannot make it worse. Scotland decided to adopt the new calendar independently, no doubt with the urging of one of Nicola Sturgeon’s ancestors, and they adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1600, with their year starting on the 1st of January, while England stuck with the Julian Calendar, and the year beginning on the 25th of March.

I kid you not.

All that nonsense is thankfully in the past now, except of course that it isn’t. Anybody who has anything to do with taxes, which is just about all of us, will know that the tax year starts on the 6th of April. That date is the 25th of March, adjusted for the difference between the two calendars, with an extra day added in 1800 to stop people protesting at having to pay their taxes one day early, or what they thought might be one day early, but to be honest, everybody was so confused, they probably didn’t have a clue.

So, there you go. The 7th of January may or may not be your Christmas Day, and as for the New Year, take your pick.