But civil time and the global business reckonings that have come to depend on it require new beginnings on January 1. So thanks to some complex decisions made by Julius Caesar back in 46 B.C., we’re stuck with this date. What are our choices if we’d like to break with tradition?

We could return to the earliest New Years in recorded history and celebrate with the ancient Mesopotamians, some of whom started their year with the new moon nearest the spring equinox, others of whom started theirs with the new moon nearest the fall equinox.

Other spring possibilities are March 1, which was favored by the early Romans, or March 25, which was favored by early European Christians. Other fall possibilities include the Jewish New Year, which happens in either September or October because it depends on the moon, and the Celtic New Year, which always happens on November 1 because it depends on the sun.

A more dramatic break with traditon would be to abandon all Middle Eastern, Jewish, Christian, Roman, Celtic, and English roots and celebrate with the Chinese. They count the new moons after the winter solstice and start their lunar New Year with the second one — which occurs sometime between January 20-21 and February 20-21. Historically, they also used to celebrate a solar New Year that began around February 4 — the time of year they called the Beginning of Spring.

Yet another option, which has definite appeal, would be to forget about the New Year altogether. In the cycle of the seasons there is no real beginning or ending, so why bother to stop or start again what’s essentially continuous?

Was Julius Caesar a joker who saddled us with an arbitrary New Year? Or was he perhaps a bit like Janus, the Roman god of gateways and beginnings, who was capable of looking both backward and forward at the same time?

Looking backward, Caesar saw the need for an agreed upon New Year. Looking forward, maybe he saw that future civilizations would need a fixed and mathematically calculable New Year that could be accepted across boundaries and cultures without respect to past traditions. As of 2000-plus years later, his choice of January 1 seems to be serving the purpose.

MORE INFORMATION

New Year – Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year>

This Wikipedia entry for the New Year has lots of information and lots of links. Wikipedia materialized after I had been working on my Naturalist’s Almanac for several years, and I considered changing my title to A Naturalist’s Guide to Wikipedia. But that would have been a cop-out. I wanted my Almanac to be based on my own reading and research because it’s my retirement project, and it continues to be a major part of my continuing education. I also take pride in finding bits of information and occasional links that Wikipedia missed.

New Year Traditions <http://www.fathertimes.net/traditions.htm>

This is an Australian Web site and it has ads, but it offers a bit of information on just about every New Year that is celebrated around the world.

He spent three winters trying to draw snowflakes, but they melted before he could capture all the details. So he talked his parents into buying him a special camera-microscope combination that he theorized could take photographs of snowflakes. It took him two more winters, but he finally got that first photograph.

Forty-six years and more than 5,000 photographs later, Wilson Alwyn Bentley, who died at age 66, had established himself as a world authority on snowflakes. One way to appreciate his accomplishment is to go outdoors during a snowstorm and try to catch, magnify, and examine some snowflakes yourself.

You’ll find that it’s challenging. But I’ve discovered a quick and easy way to get a look at some occasional snowflakes. I just turn my binoculars upside down, which changes them from long-distance magnifiers to close-up magnifiers, and look at the snowflakes that fall on the dark sleeve of my winter jacket.

One of the first things I learned from my own observations is that Snowflake Bentley wasn’t photographing whole snowflakes. He was photographing individual snow crystals from the groups of crystals that we call snowflakes. A snowflake is an amorphous clump, while a snow crystal is an exquisite six-sided structure.

According to the experts who followed Bentley, snow crystals come in seven different shapes, but the shape I notice most often is the one Bentley himself saw most often. It’s a stellar crystal — as opposed to a plate, column, needle, spatial dendrite, capped column, or irregular crystal. A stellar crystal looks like a child’s paper cut-out — a lacy, six-pointed star.

For me it’s enough to see a few transient snow crystals through reversed binoculars, but Bentley wanted to study as many as he could, compare them, and learn from them. In the process, he created permanent images that all of us can share.

If you’d like to see some of these images, look for a copy of Snow Crystals, a collection of over 2,000 of Bentley’s photographs that was published shortly before he died. They represent Bentley’s work at its best — science so good it’s art.

MORE INFORMATION

Snowflake Bentley <http://snowflakebentley.com>

This is the Jericho (Vermont) Historical Society’s Web site. Snowflake Bentley lived in Jericho, and the Historical Society has quite a bit of archival material by or about him. Their attractive Web site includes excellent photos of Bentley and some of his snowflakes. Under Resources you will find the text of articles written by Bentley himself 1910-1925, a list of books about him, numerous links to other Web sites, and answers to Frequently Asked Questions. They offer online shopping for many–some of them unique–snowflake-related items from their gift shop, plus a virtual tour of their museum, plus an online newsletter, plus a lively and interesting message board.

Bentley Snow Crystal Collection <http://bentley.sciencebuff.org/index.htm>

This Buffalo Museum of Science site offers a digital library of Snowflake Bentley’s original images just as they were taken. It also includes a biography, an explanation of his photographic process, and other resource material. I found the background on how this digital library was produced quite interesting.

Wilson Bentley <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley>

The Wikipedia article on Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley includes a brief biography with several links to related Wikipedia articles. The ones I found most interesting were MICROSCOPES (especially HISTORY OF), the year 1885, and WILLIAM D. HUMPHREYS, a physicist who helped Bentley get his photographs published. It also offers several snowflake photos, plus a bibliography, plus a link back to the Jericho Historical Society’s Web site. At the very bottom of the page are links to the categories Bentley is included in, the most fascinating of which is AUTODIDACTS….

Imbolc meant the beginning of spring for the Celtic peoples of northern Europe and the British Isles. Lambs were born and with them came the promise of new life and the beginning of a new agricultural year that would proceed through Beltane (May 1), Lughnasa (August 1), and Samhain (November 1).

Our American Groundhog Day doesn’t derive directly from the Celtic Imbolc but rather from a Christian celebration that chanced to coincide with Imbolc. Early Christians evolved a church ritual to be celebrated forty days after Christmas — February 2 on their calendar. It was called Candlemas because it involved blessing candles to be used in the new year.

As the Christian church moved into northern Europe and the British Isles, it encountered the Celts who were already celebrating Imbolc in early February. As these Celts were converted, they associated the new Christian Candlemas with their old Imbolc — and therefore with the beginning of spring. Because to them spring meant planting, Candlemas became the day they looked for a sign of how soon they would be able to plant. They came to believe that if it was sunny enough on Candlemas for an animal to cast a shadow, there would be six more weeks of winter. Stormy or overcast weather on Candlemas meant an early spring.

This Celtic/Christian weather belief got superimposed on North American groundhogs by European farmers who came to this country. So we now have Groundhog Day every February 2 to remind us — like the ancient Celts — to think about spring. If you’d like to combine several of these historic beliefs and rituals into a modern Imbolc/Candlemas celebration, you can start by paying attention to the sunrise and sunset on February 1 and enjoying every minute of daylight.

After sunrise on February 2, you can go outdoors and look for your own shadow to see how much longer we’re going to have to wait for spring. And maybe after sunset you can light a candle and think about spring. Then you can spend the next six weeks much as the ancient Celts did, observing subtle changes in the natural world as the days lengthen and the weather warms. When your local soil is finally workable enough to plant a seed, you’ll know it’s really spring.

MORE INFORMATION

Cross Quarter Days

<http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/crossquartergrd.html>

Not many scientists write about the Celtic cross-quarter days, but this one does. As the former director of the Hansen Planetarium in Utah, Von Del Chamberlain knows his astronomy — and also his weather, his natural history, and other cultures’ practices with respect to the solar year. He writes a newspaper column called “Looking Around” from which this very readable essay is adapted.

Imbolc – Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbolc>

This Wikipedia article covers the Celtic origins of Imbolc and modern practices related to February 1. It offers internal links to Wikipedia articles on other Celtic celebrations and external links to several Web sites.

The Chinese solar calendar is less familiar than the Chinese lunar calendar, which is the one that gets all the press during Chinese New Year celebrations. But I find the solar calendar more useful because it divides the year into 24 mini-seasons with names descriptive of what’s going on in the natural world.

These mini-seasons, each of which lasts for 15 or 16 days, are called solar terms, or more poetically, “joints and breaths.” The year begins with the solar term called “Spring Begins,” which occurs halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox — on February 4 in the year 2000. Using dates based on Universal Time — the time at the Greenwich Meridian — to avoid the confusion that can be caused by different time zones and the international date line, the solar terms for 2000 are:

Spring Begins …………… Feb 4 – Feb 18
Rain Water ……………….. Feb 19 – Mar 4
Excited Insects ………… Mar 5 – Mar 19
Vernal Equinox ………… Mar 20 – Apr 3
Clear and Bright ……….. Apr 4 – Apr 18
Grain Rains ……………… Apr 19 – May 4
Summer Begins ………… May 5 – May 19
Grain Fills ……………….. May 20 – Jun 4
Grain in Ear ………………. Jun 5 – Jun 20
Summer Solstice ……….. Jun 21 – Jul 5
Slight Heat ……………….. Jul 6 – Jul 21
Great Heat ………………… Jul 22 – Aug 6
Autumn Begins …………. Aug 7 – Aug 21
Limit of Heat ……………. Aug 22 – Sep 6
White Dew ……………….. Sep 7 – Sep 21
Autumn Equinox ……… Sep 22 – Oct 6
Cold Dew ………………… Oct 7 – Oct 22
Hoar Frost ……………….. Oct 23 – Nov 6
Winter Begins …………… Nov 7 – Nov 21
Little Snow ………………. Nov 22 – Dec 5
Great Snow ………………. Dec 6 – Dec 20
Winter Solstice …………..Dec 21 – Jan 5
Little Cold ………………….Jan 6 – Jan 19
Great Cold ………………….Jan 20 – Feb 3

These 24 solar terms helped ancient Chinese farmers remember their way through the agricultural year, and they could easily be adapted to help modern naturalists remember their way through the natural year. Because the solar terms are based on the sun rather than complicated, sometimes compromised solar-lunar systems that underlie most civil and religious calendars, they offer the purest, most natural calendar I’ve found.

MORE INFORMATION

The Fresian School <http://www.friesian.com/chinacal.htm>

This Web site offers detailed information on the Chinese calendar with a clear explanation of the solar terms. They also offer links to additional information. For consistency, I use this Web site’s translations for the names of each solar term and its dates for the year 2000.

Chinese Fortune Calendar <http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/FAQ.htm>

This is a Chinese astrology Web site, but it’s written by a mathematician and computer scientist who has spent over a decade researching solar and lunar dates. His explanation of the Chinese solar terms is clear and simple, and the rest of his Web site is full of fascinating information.

Lichun – Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichun>

Lichun is the first solar term of the Chinese solar calendar. This Wikipedia article is written partially in Chinese, but it offers some information in English. A solar terms graphic and a chart of dates are useful references.

Scholars aren’t sure exactly who the historic Valentine was, but he’s remembered as a martyr, not a lover. His feast day has since been dropped from the church calendar, so his only lasting contribution to today’s Valentine’s Day is his name.

As for the birds, medieval Christians observed that some of them were mating at the time of Saint Valentine’s feast. They therefore decided to believe that all birds chose their mates on February 14. In the early 1380s Chaucer offered a written record of this belief in his long love poem, The Parliament of Fowls: “For this was on St. Valentine’s Day/When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.”

From the medieval folk belief about birds, it wasn’t much of a leap to decide that human beings should choose their mates on Saint Valentine’s Day too — or at least engage in games and rituals associated with mating. Actually, this birds/Valentine’s Day connection is not too far-fetched. Even in snowy Vermont, several species of birds have begun to mate by February.

If you go outdoors on Valentine’s eve, for instance, you might hear owls hooting. The owls I hear most often, the eight-hooters known as barred owls, can be courting loudly by mid-February. Eastern screech-owls can be courting too. The largest of our common owls, the great horneds, might already be sitting on their eggs.

After sunrise on Valentine’s Day itself you might hear black-capped chickadees practicing their territorial fee-bee songs and hairy woodpeckers drumming on hollow trees to re-establish their pair-bonds. But perhaps the most observable of these early birds is the plain old pigeon. Vermont’s pigeons are often in the advanced stages of courting by Valentine’s Day and have been known to have young in their nests by early March.

So as you’re thinking about Valentine’s Day, alert yourself to subtle shifts in bird behavior. For birds, this time of year has nothing to do romantic love. Their behavior is a very real biological response to the changing seasons, with some species already bonded or forming the bonds that will produce, protect, and launch their young.

And isn’t that probably what our human Valentine’s Day — whatever its various roots — was originally all about?

MORE INFORMATION

History Channel <http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/valentine/>

The History Channel offers interesting background information, attractive graphics, and some nice love stories about couples like the Trumans, the Brownings, and the Jackie Robinsons.

Catholic Encyclopedia <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm>

New Advent offers the Catholic Encyclopedia online. Their entry on St. Valentine tells what is known about who he might have been with links to additional historical information. They mention Chaucer and the connection between St. Valentine’s Day and birds.

Valentine’s Day – Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine’s_Day>

The Wikipedia entry on Valentine’s Day will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Valentine’s Day.

The legend continues that King Numa Pompilius added January and February. The days now added up to 355, approximately the number in 12 lunar cycles but still 10 to 11 days short of a solar year. So Numa invented an extra month called Mercedinus that would be added to February every other year.

Numa’s calendar was getting closer to a system that would work, but its lingering attachment to the lunar cycle made it unwieldy. Julius Caesar decided to ignore the lunar cycle and get rid of Mercedinus by arranging the number of days in the twelve months to add up to exactly 365 1/4. February wound up with 29 days plus an extra every fourth year.

Julius Caesar’s calendar, which is referred to as the Julian calendar, is essentially the one we use today — with a few minor adjustments. It may have been Augustus, or maybe his admirers, who made the final adjustment to February. February 29 got shifted to August, which had been named in honor of Augustus, because August needed an extra day to be equal to July, which had been named in honor of Julius.

So that’s how February came to be only 28 days. Interestingly enough a recent proposal for calendar reform suggests that all months should have 28 days and that there should be 13 of them. This fixed calendar would add up to 364, requiring only one extra day— two in leap years — to make the calendar dead simple.

If math were all that mattered it might work, but our current calendar’s luni-solar roots are deeply embedded in our religious, cultural, and even business lives. The irregular civil calendar that governs our days remains our most enduring connection to these ancient roots.

MORE INFORMATION

Early Roman Calendar <http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html>

This site offers lots of interesting information arranged in an question-and-answer format with some interesting reproductions of old Roman calendars. Click on Credits and Feedback for more resources.

Romans’ Messy Calendar

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node3.html#SECTION00380000000000000000

That’s 16 zeros! This link will take you directly to the section of Claus Tondering’s FAQ’s that discusses the Roman calendar. He questions how much we really know about early Roman calendars and Augustus’ adjustments to the Julian calendar.

Roman Calendar

Because his astronomer, Sosigenes, based his calculations on an estimate of 365.25 days per solar year, Caesar figured that adding an extra day every fourth year would keep the calendar aligned with the sun. But the earth actually takes only 365.2422 days to travel around the sun, so those regularly added leap days turned out to be a few too many.

Calendar dates began to shift away from solar events, first at the almost imperceptible rate of one day in 128 years but then at an alarming three days in four centuries. By 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII addressed himself to the problem, the spring equinox was occurring on March 11 — ten full days ahead of schedule. On the advice of his astronomers, Aloysius Lilius and Christopher Clavius, Pope Gregory made two changes.

First, he dropped ten days right out of the calendar — the days between October 4 and October 15, to be exact — to realign key dates with the sun. Then he arranged to reduce the number of future leap years. He omitted them in century years except those divisible by 400. Thus, 1600 and 2000 would still be leap years, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 would not.

Some sixteenth century women were probably miffed by this change because leap years — especially February 29th itself — had become associated with the opportunity for women to ask men to marry them. The new Gregorian calendar would deprive them and their female descendants of three chances at self-selected pairings over the next five hundred years.

Recent scholars have proposed yet another modification to eliminate yet a few more leap years. They have suggested that leap years should also be omitted in years divisible by 4000 to correct a lingering discrepancy between the Gregorian calendar and solar years.

This final correction would reduce the discrepancy to only one day every 20,000 years, which maybe we should just accept. Why not declare that extra day a day-without-a-date and celebrate it as a gift from the sun?

MORE INFORMATION

Leap Years

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/astronomical-information-center/leap-years

The U. S. Naval Observatory is the authority on matters involving astronomy and the calendar. Because so many people have asked them about leap year, they have prepared a clear, concise scientific answer on the subject.

Leap Year Rules

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node3.html#SECTION00321000000000000000

Claus Tondering, for all his zeros, offers some very interesting details about the Leap Year rules.

Most of the Catholic countries of western Europe adopted the new Gregorian calendar in 1582, and after a certain amount of consternation in October of that year, learned to live by it. But the Protestant countries were a different story. Each had to come to its own decision about this new calendar, and for some it was harder than others.

By the late 1600s, the Swedes were still using the old Julian calendar, but they had begun to think that maybe they should join Protestant Germany and the other Scandinavian countries in a turn-of-the-century conversion to the Gregorian. About then, however, someone in Sweden had the brilliant idea that if they merely skipped the next 11 leap years, they wouldn’t have to drop 10 days all at once, and they’d be fully converted to the Gregorian calendar by 1740.

So while Sweden’s neighbors dropped the 10 days, skipped the leap year in 1700 as the Gregorian calendar did, and made the conversion, Sweden merely skipped the leap year and otherwise left their old calendar intact. It didn’t take long for the Swedes to realize that they were now one day out of sync with the other countries that were still using the Julian calendar and 10 days out of sync with the countries that were now using the Gregorian calendar.

They decided that it would just be too confusing to be different from everyone else for 40 years. So they didn’t skip anymore leap years, and in 1712 they added back in the one they had skipped in 1700 by including a one-time-only February 30. They were now back in sync with the Julian calendar, which was 11 days longer than the Gregorian.

Finally, in 1753 — a year after England converted — Sweden, having resisted dropping 10 days all at once back in 1700, dropped 11 days and joined the rest of Europe. I find myself wondering what ever happened to the Swedish babies who chanced to be born on February 30, 1712 — and never once got to celebrate their true birthdays.

MORE INFORMATION

February 1712

http://WWW.TONDERING.DK/claus/calpic/feb1712.html

Claus Tondering, who is Danish, located a Swedish almanac from the year 1712. At this link he offers a reproduction of the page that includes February 30.

Calendar Conversion Dates

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node3.html#SECTION00324000000000000000

That’s 15 zeros! This link will take you to the section of Claus Tondering’s FAQs that talks about what years the different countries converted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Scroll down to the end of his list of dates for a brief discussion of Sweden’s curious decisions.