At The Changing Of The Year

This morning I was woken with a text beep and realised suddenly that it's New Year's Eve to-day, and not (as I had thought) "in a couple of days". Yes, big deal I forgot the date, so what? These days its easy to synchronise your date with everyone else, what with The Internet and those new toasters that burn the date into the bread.

But there was a time before all that, where not everyone was on the same page. You couldn't simply read your toast and know where you were on the orbit. You had to work. It. Out. Only the wealthy could afford to "keep up to date" and indeed that is where the phrase came from. It was a sign of status that one knew what date it was and how many sleeps there were until christmas. The poor of course had no idea when it was and often kept working until they died, believing they were only 6 years old and that it was noon.

Each house would keep their own calendar, compiled from haphazard viewings of the sun and stars. The Family Calendar was a strikingly complicated chart, emblazoned with the crest and often featured extra months or days. Some noble calendars believed that the first 3 months repeated themselves twice at the beginning of the year. It was all guess work and highly inaccurate. I find it hilarious to think of these old English aristocrats rooting around in their Diembulary, shuffling old papers and mumbling about angles.