Welcome 2024

Monday, January 1, 2024

            Happy New Year 2024!  Back in 2020, the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas released a radio transcript for New Year’s Day that year.  They described in the transcript about how the modern-day calendar came about, taking root with the Roman Empire.  Given the number of calendars humanity used in the past, there is one calendar we presently use: the Gregorian Calendar.  Today is the beginning of the 2024 calendar year, according to the Gregorian calendar the world uses right now.

            You can thank Julius Caesar for the calendar we use today, despite the fact it was modified in the later part of the Renaissance era.  In the late-16th century, William Shakespeare wrote a historical play and tragedy called Julius Caesar, where Julius Caesar was assassinated on the “ides of March” in 44 B.C.  Before then calendarial reforms promulgated by Julius Caesar, the Roman calendar was unorganized.  The months did not match the cycle of seasons unlike some of the tribal calendars used outside of the Roman Empire.  Therefore, Julius Caesar called upon a Greek astronomer and mathematician, Sosigenes of Alexandria, which he would design the Julian calendar in 46 B.C.  The Julian calendar was designed in the way that is mostly in line with the Gregorian calendar we use today.  It had 12 months that added up to 365 days.  An extra day was added every fourth February, so that the calendar would stay in time with the seasons.  Other reforms added in the Julian Calendar was the addition of two additional months, July and August, named after Julius Caesar and Caesar Octavian Augustus.  Pope Gregory XIII when he adopted a rule for leap years in centurial years, which those centurial years divisible by 400 are leap years.  While the Julian Calendar’s average calendar year was 365.25 days.  Gregory XIII’s calendarial reform by adding the leap year rule shorted the average year to 365.2425 days, closely approximating the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

            While people today numerically number the days of the month, the Romans did not call January 1 the “first.”  Given the fact that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the “ides of March,” the “ides” was known as the middle of any month.  According to the Romans, the beginning of each month was the “kalends,” which today would be known as the “kalends of January.”  The English word “calendar” is derived from that same word “calends,” which is related to the verb calare, meaning “to call out” or “calling.”  The world is calling us to a new calendar year today.