Merry Christmas!!

Wha- buh, huh, what?

"But I thought Christmas was, like, two weeks ago, right?"

Nuh-uh.

See, this is an explanation that I'm pretty good at explaining, because I've had to explain it almost every year.

It starts off class. We're all sitting there, and somebody blurts out, "Misses so-and-so, I'm not gonna be here the first day of class, 'cause I'm..." and they start to talk about how they're going to be with family in Virginia or spending the break in Canada or damnit where'd my Doritos go?

At any rate, when they finally finish talking, I put up my hand, and (whether called on or not) cry out "I'm not gonna be here on January Seventh. It's my Christmas."

And the teacher usually either doesn't care or stares at me funny.


So now I will explain exactly how this strange calendrical anomally came about.


First off, for those of you who can't cope with the idea of Christmas not being the 25th of December: don't worry. It still is. Kinda.

See, there's two calendars. Originally, there was only one.


Julius Caesar decided that he was so awesome, he could define time itself! Or maybe he just had a good idea and wanted to see it implemented.

Either way, the Julian calendar was used by the Western world until the 1500's.


Don't fight with me on this. I know someone out there is like "No! We still use his calendar!" But that person is wrong. Keep reading.


In 1581, the Roman Catholic Church realized it had a problem. A problem of Earth-shakingly huge proportions that really doesn't seem like it would be an issue today.

Easter was growing further and further away from Passover.


Now, in the Roman Rite Church, Easter is the third Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

Of course, the Church can't just change Church doctrine. That's not what the Church does. And it goes against Church doctrine to change Church doctrine.


So, they came up with the perfect solution: change the calendar.

Essentially, they just pushed the calendar up thirteen days.


They called it the Gregorian calendar, after Pope Gregory XIII, and it took effect in October of 1582.

Incidentally, it also changed the new year back to January 1, from March 25.


Natually, as it was the sixteenth century, the change wasn't immediate -- or even swift -- with many parts of Europe still using the old Julian calendar for at least a hundred or so years afterward.

England and her colonies, for example, didn't officially change over to the new calender until 1752. And Russia didn't bother to change over until 1917, when Russian Orthodoxy was outlawed after the revolution -- and the new government was converting to the more "secular" calendar.


So, yeah.

Merry Christmas.