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Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

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Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#31

Post by moate »

piombisallow wrote: post #24

The impulse to chop up life into neat and rounded boxes is one of the most annoying and pernicious. Also the jarring rationalistic condescension towards millennia of evolving norms of time keeping. If only this guy was in charge of our lives, how neat and rational everything would be!

What are you on about? Seems like a reasonable question to ask, seemed like a funny way to answer.

Some advice from Mr Costa: Six cups of eggnog Makes my nose rosy red And it get me in the Christmas mood

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#32

Post by Dolototo »

piombisallow wrote: post #23
Dolototo wrote: post #15

Would be awesome if more would start celebrating the winter solstice again instead of Christmas. It would unite us more and based on science and not on some arbitrary thoughts. So in the spirit of it: happy winter solstice everyone! (I know I'm 2 days late)

The world is increasingly united around Christmas, mostly stripped of its religious connotations.

[flagged]

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#33

Post by mijkal »

> Then they got lazy and just numbered the months.

* Chinese et al have entered the chat

This pattern is fairly common around the world.

It's amusing to me that in the Western world, the original Latin designations are off by two as we moved the start month but never adjusted the corresponding month numbers (so DECember (10) = 12, etc).

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#34

Post by tmtvl »

shalmanese wrote: post #4
dang wrote: post #3

Does anybody know the year for this? I put 2018 above because of https://web.archive.org/web/20190513173414/https://gist.gith... .

> all of a sudden it was the 4th century CE (i.e. about 1600-1700 years ago) This, at least, narrows it down a bit.

Somewhere between 1900 and 2098 (or 2099 if the range is inclusive).

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#35

Post by mistrial9 »

Dolototo wrote: post #32
piombisallow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is increasingly united around Christmas, mostly stripped of its religious connotations.

[flagged]

conversion of the German Tribes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Wars

Christianity took hold as an organized system of bishops, serving under Kings, and acknowledged the practices of slavery; on the other hand, universal literacy, arts and science, sexual modesty and monogamous marriage were not always common.

Your rude reference to children is a special Catholic problem no? but truth be told, lots of cultures have rude low-class customs involving children, and second many Christians did lift up the standards for hygiene and habits.

source: a year with Lutherans in the USA recently

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#36

Post by euroderf »

mijkal wrote: post #33

> Then they got lazy and just numbered the months. * Chinese et al have entered the chat This pattern is fairly common around the world. It's amusing to me that in the Western world, the original Latin designations are off by two as we moved the start month but never adjusted the corresponding month numbers (so DECember (10) = 12, etc).

Render unto Caesar the two months that are Caesar's.

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#37

Post by downvotetruth »

yen223 wrote: post #7
globular-toast wrote: post #6

It's fun to laugh at this, but they made the system we still use. We still cling on to the stupid and useless concept of months. They fixed their stupid calendar. We cling on to it.

We added daylight savings time, so yeah...

Generous use of we instead of our lords and masters.

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#38

Post by Dolototo »

mistrial9 wrote: post #18
Dolototo wrote: post #15

Would be awesome if more would start celebrating the winter solstice again instead of Christmas. It would unite us more and based on science and not on some arbitrary thoughts. So in the spirit of it: happy winter solstice everyone! (I know I'm 2 days late)

that was tried in the New Age movement of the 1980s, which got some people going, an American interest in Yoga, some derision but mostly jeers and yawns. You must know that there are holiday ceremonies all around the world at that time, but they are typically considered "old" or "naive" or uneducated. The world-conquering language groups brought with them non-nature based religions, which purposefully offset as peopl…

I'm curious if we as humans would be more deceptive to climate change if we would still have nature based beliefs

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#39

Post by Dolototo »

mistrial9 wrote: post #35
Dolototo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

conversion of the German Tribes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Wars Christianity took hold as an organized system of bishops, serving under Kings, and acknowledged the practices of slavery; on the other hand, universal literacy, arts and science, sexual modesty and monogamous marriage were not always common. Your rude reference to children is a special Catholic problem no? but truth be told, lots of cultures hav…

[flagged]

Re: Why isn't the new year on the winter solstice? (2018)

#40

Post by yen223 »

jameshart wrote: post #29
globular-toast wrote: post #6

It's fun to laugh at this, but they made the system we still use. We still cling on to the stupid and useless concept of months. They fixed their stupid calendar. We cling on to it.

I think one of the most remarkable things about calendars is the endurance of ‘weeks’. For thousands of years, across civilizations, we’ve been counting off cycles of seven days, presumably successfully keeping in synch with one another, leading to the broad agreement across billions of humans that today is a Sunday.

This is true. Especially considering a "week" isn't tied to any specific astronomical phenomenon, unlike the day, month or year.

Maybe it succeeded because it's not tied to an astronomical phenomenon, and so we aren't tempted to botch it with "leap days" and whatnot.

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