So, exactly when did that happen?

Occasionally, while researching historical references, I encountered notations such as, “date adjusted”, “old calendar” and “new calender”.  I had no idea what these notations referred to or how they affected the dates they were attached to.  So, I did some research and found that by Papal decree, way back in 1582, the calendar was being changed to bring in into more close alignment to church history and references.  This was done by removing days from the calendar year and changing the way leap year was calculated.  Thus, Friday, 15 October 1582 followed Thursday 4 October 1582 and everything in between was lost forever.

The Catholic decree was implemented by the Papal States – Spain, Portugal, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and most of Italy.  France adopted the revision 9 December 1582 to 20 December 1582.  The Dutch on 25 December 1582, 1 January 1583 and 12 January 1583.

The Protestant countries initially rejected the Catholic invention, maybe fearing the new calendar was part of a plot to return them to Catholic rule.  In the Czech lands the Protestants resisted the calendar imposed by the Hapsburg Monarchy.  In Ireland the Catholic rebels kept the “new Easter” in defiance of the English authorities.  By 1690 there was pretty much uniform acceptance of the new calendar but implementation was done differently in the several nations over the next decade. 

In the American colonies, adoption was made generally by Wednesday, 2 September 1752 becoming Thursday, 14 September 1752.  In Alaska the change took place when Friday, 6 October 1867 was followed by Friday 18 October 1867, when the US purchased Alaska from Russia.  Friday was followed by another Friday due to the relocation of the “International Date Line”, which had previously placed Alaska in the different day of the week.

Russia did not change until 1918, as did most of the other Orthodox countries, with Greece holding out until March 1923.  Japan officially replaced its lunisolar calendar in 1872 but still refers to the “Nengo” (reign name reference) instead of the “Anno Domino” system, especially in official documents.  (Meiji 1=1868, Taisho 1=1912, Showa 1=1926 and Heisei 1=1989).  Korea and China adopted the Gregorian calendar as late as 1928.

Today, many Orthodox churches continue to use the old Julian calendar and thus their Christmas falls on 7 January instead of 25 December.  Some countries, especially in the Middle East, maintain a calendar different from the rest of the world.  In some early historical records and references the dates were recorded in a transitional manner, i.e. 10/21 /February 1750/51.  Occasionally, reference to “Old Style” and “New Style” are sometimes added, i.e. “OS” and “NS”. 

While all these changes don’t really have much effect on very much, they do in some instances.  For example, William III of England arrived at Brixham, England on 5 November 1688 (Julian calendar) after setting sail from the Netherlands on 11 November 1688 (Gregorian calendar).  While the Gregorian calendar, our present system, is more accurate than the old system, it too is flawed.  By the year 4000 A.D. we will have accumulated near a full day’s error, and by the year 12,000 A.D. that error will be at least eight days.  There is a proposal to change the leap year schedule so that any year that can be evenly divided by 400 will not be a leap year.  There seems to be no agreement amongst the several nations to implement the change, after all it still leaves a calendar which is not “accurate”.  Sometime, centuries down the road, the leap year would have to be included in a year that could be evenly divided by 400, and that still would not be a perfect calendar.   And, I suspect, that those references to “date corrected” or some such notation, are probably wrong one way or another – there simply is no standard to adjust to and any “adjustment” could well be in error.  But does it really matter if there were 365 calendar days in the year, or if there really were only354?  Does it really matter that a marriage recorded on say 20 September 1559 would actually relate to 2 October 1559 if the date were converted to our modern calendar?  I think not and therefore I do not make any adjustments to dates.  I do wonder how the mothers and fathers dealt with the children, who happen to have a birthday fall on the days “lost” when the new calendar was implemented.  “Mommy, since I didn’t have a birthday, does that mean I’m not really a year older?” 

MDR 6/10/2013