When I was at school
a century year was a leap year when it was divisible by 400.
El Reg would like to apologise to all its readers for the recent spate of ill-timed end of the decade articles, which it, along with the rest of the media have been tacking on to the close of 2009. In fact, the end of the first decade of the 21st century does not take place until the year 2010. Or 2004 if a more accurate …
Don't bother faffing with dates on the grounds be don't all work on the land anymore - life would be far simpler for us Brits if they dumped that BST nonsense.
As to the birth of JC - the Romans were notorious record keepers, he was supposedly born during or around the time of a large census in the Palestine region, so it shouldn't be too much trouble for a historian to pick a year?
Happy New Year :oP
It isn't - the census was in 6AD, Herod died in 4BC.
Only one gospel mentions the census, only one mentions Herod (stable/wise men etc).
It's just that it's more fun for the little kids to dress up as sheperds at christmas than have them play at being Roman civil servants - so the Herod story wins.
Not quite sure why you'd want to revert to the Julian Calendar given that it is inaccurate according to the Solar Year. If you're doing that you may as well go Lunar, which would mean that Easter stays still and Christmas moves. At least that would be a change.
Instead we should be championing the Herschel amendment to the Gregorian Calendar to exempt the year 4000 from being a leap year - making it an even better approximation of the solar year. Of course it won't affect us, but it would mean that the calendar will be named after a scientist rather than a theologian.
And that can only be a good thing.
Can't we keep it simple... Is it not easier to celebrate the "Decade" meaning 10 years every time the tens digit is changed, and respectively so the hundreds, thousands, etc? lets face it we don't even know for a fact if Jesus even truly existed, and every one who has ever attempted to prove ANY thing that happened in the bible as being fact has been stacked against with a mountain of refuting evidence... So here is how I see it... We don't know the exact date the earth was created, thus we need some point... We use the supposed birth (or death or some other fictitious date in the middle) of Jesus as a starting point... So assume that the previous year as year 0 and call it a bloody day! (or year if you are so pleased).
"we don't even know for a fact if Jesus even truly existed"
Was that a tin foil hat you were wearing to shield the mind control rays ? I haven't been to America, but I tend to believe that the existence of America isn't a conspiracy because I have reasons to trust those who have been there and who claim to live there. The fact that scientific proof applies to nothing recorded by history doesn't mean the very many who recorded and preserved it are all conspiring against the facts.
Some history within the Bible also ties in extensively with non-Biblical history of the same period, including the Gospels with what Roman historians of the period wrote as well as with current archaelogy, while some Biblical accounts including the Parables and the Book of Job don't tie in with other history - for the somewhat obvious reason that these are presented within the Bible as works of fiction.
So before making sweeping statements like the one above which puts you firmly into the flat earthers and moon landing deniers camp, if you don't want others reasonably to consider you to be either nuts or thick, then you might want to do yourself the favour of studying and thinking a bit more carefully about the subject.
thereby QED he was the Son of God and all of your counter arguments are false.
I herby claim that I am the 2nd son of God and that it is the 1st of January 2010...
Now in 2000 yrs time when somebody digs up the El Reg hard drive and, lo, do discover that the date of my proclamation matches the actual date and that furthermore America does exist then I must indeed by the Son of God 2 and must have existed.
[although of course I do exist]
Well, Christian Orthodox Church (well, most of them) are still using Julian calendar, so I'm having Christmas on 7th Jan. I'll drink to that occasion, again....And we also have a New year on 1 Jan, which to other people it would be 13 Jan, so I'm having a dress rehearsal for that occasion tonight....
PS
Life is not to bad, Christmas comes twice a year
According to this theory, I've lost 6 years of my life, I can only put that down to smoking and alcohol, unfortunately, my wife doesn't allow me to circulate in circles that have loose women as well.(which is fortunate because at that rate, I'd be dead by now), OR is this the afterlife, and I am actually serving time in purgatory already.
The end of the World took place Tuesday just before tea time. You might have missed it because frankly, it was a bit of a cock-up. The third of the seas turning to blood was cancelled since the organising committee couldn't agree on whether calling it 'the Sea of Japan' was politically correct in this day and age; the Antichrist cried off saying that with Simon Cowell still alive all of his work was done; and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are still mired in a particularly malevolent contraflow just outside of Basingstoke (twinned with the Infernal Pit since 4004BC).
"Modern experts prefer 7BC, or thereabouts, as Jesus’ birth day – which means that today is actually 18 December 2015."
Well I'll be happy to put the left-over turkey on hold for seven days, but do we know the exact date of Jesus's birthday. Didn't the early Christians just hi-jack an existing pagan midwinter festival?
Anyway we should rationalise the whole calendar so that year 1 starts with the big bang!
The haggis gets it tonight, come what may!
That means I retired three years ago and therefore have been working for these muppets for the fun of it since then. Dammit!!! Also it means that the Prince (or whatever his name is these days) was off by a few years, and come to think of it, so was the Millenium bug !!
Happy New Year (or not) as the case may be ;-)
On any Linux or Unix machine (including a mac) type
cal 1752
And take a close look at September. Notice anything missing?
The calendar has been such a mess in so many places for so long that you're on a hiding to nothing if you're using dates to calculate, well, anything. And don't get me started on Sweden, if you want a good laugh go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar and look for the bit about Sweden adopting the Gregorian calander.
Why are we still using a calendar tied to the vague birth date of a long-dead possibly-ficticious prophet, anyway?
I propose we set year zero to a definitive, SCIENCE based date. Unless somebody knows the exact date of some significant event (discovery of fire? creation of wheel?), tomorrow will do - and so a few hours ago at the international date line, it would be 00:00:00 1/1/0.
Any date before that can be measured in negative figures, eg. I was born in -30.
Given that the year for tax starts April 6th and for schools starts September the1st (or thereabouts) and the various sporting "seasons" all have different timings it seems a bit silly to claim that the day when the year number changes is not the new year. Even sillier than El Reg has become of late.
Sure it may not be the "new legal year" in the same way that tomorrow is the same tax year as today (and the same school year) but the clue is in the question: year 2009 changes to year 2010 - it is not that fucking difficult.
Ah, but the pay I will receive in four days for the work I did in December will not be counted in my current tax year. The period in France is Jan 1 - Dec 31.
FWIW, I am considering this the new decade too. The tens digit has changed. Okay, we start with a "zero" year, but it makes more sense to peg it to the number that changes every ten than otherwise.
And if you disagree, fine, but just remember the "noughties" (yuck, horrible term) have been a disaster in so many ways. Do you REALLY want another year of it?
All of this time business is arbitrary claptrap shoved down our throat by "the man" in a grand Pavlovian experiment. The next thing you know he'll be pulling our strings to trick us into getting up an hour earlier to "save daylight" during a time of year when the bloody sun is only down for a few hours! Another tug and we sleep in so our commute both ways is in the dark, phantoms of the night we'll be! Screw this, tomorrow is the 11th of Unember and the decade ended a week ago at 8:64 on the 37th of Decuary.