Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Lady Day

Today is 25 March and the traditional start of the new year for employment contracts, rents etc or at least it was until they changed the calendar and got rid of 11 days. Canny landlords etc objected and the tax year was moved to start on 5 April. Something that confused me no end when I first moved over here.

The reason for it being called Lady Day as it was exactly nine months from Christmas. This goes to show that various people listened to tradition, rather than researching facts. The celebration of the birth of Jesus was a reaction to Saturnalia. The Coptic Christians celebrate the birth of Christ in May (or so I understand) May makes more sense because of the way the Romans did their census, but it sort of puts paid to carols like in The Bleak Mid-winter... It is interesting to see how the myths and traditions develop.

It is also my husband's birthday. And birthdays are made to be celebrated. We had carrot cake and coffee for breakfast, plus cards.

2 comments:

Kate Hardy said...

Happy birthday to your DH. (And what a nice breakfast to celebrate.)

Knew about Lady Day; aren't these snippets fascinating?

Janet Ch said...

Hi Michelle, this has nothing to do with today's blog but did you see that interesting Daily Telegraph article on the bumble bee yesterday?

http://tinyurl.com/cmz7gr