Seems simple, right? But a wise man once said, “Learn something new each day and you will have gained at lease 365 new bits of information in a year!” Deep. Can you figure out why, by adhering to this principle, you might learn 366 facts every fourth year? While you ruminate on that conundrum let’s get back to the lesson at hand.
Ever since the advent of the Gregorian Calendar, in use since its inception in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a reform of the Julian calendar, it has been accepted that January 1st would be the time for adding one to the previous year; for example 1582 would become 1583; 1584 would then become 1585 and so on, etc.), and that specific day was to be called New Year’s Day. This was a revolutionary development as the previous method of tracking years, the Julian Calendar, began the year with the number 1, causing confusion among the masses as many citizens mistook the single digit for an I or a lowercase L. It became the norm for a supervisor to hear the excuse from an employee who had not shown up for work the previous day, “Sorry, I though yesterday was L.”
All that ended when Pope Gregory named the fist month January as a tribute to the two-faced Roman God Janus, also said to be the Patron Saint of the Republican Party. The first day of January became very easy to identify as the beginning of the new year and centuries later is still known as New Years Day. Next year we will delve even further back in history to learn why many a college bowl game takes place on this day.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!