GHRISTMAS AND THE LAW

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 101, 15 December 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

GHRISTMAS AND THE LAW

T)v a Barrister

The law covers many curious tilings, and there is scarcely a department of our lives which is not a fleeted by it. Even the calendar and tlie date of Christmas which many people might consider were merely customary, are the subjects of an Act of Parliament.

Sinee the passing of the Calendar (new style) Act in 1750, and the amending Act of 17."> 1 (both of which apply, by virtue of our legal system, to New Zealand), there has been no drastic alteration of time by law. The matter is scarcely n legal one, but its history is interesting and worth knowing. Before 1582 the year was regulated by the Julian Calendar throughout Christendom. The problem, ever since astronomers and mathematicians began to work on it, liad been to reconcile the civil year to the solar year, the latter consisting ot the same number of days but about six hours extra. To meet this difficulty the Julian Calendar put in an extra day every fourth year between February 2-1 and 25, in order to absorb the extra six hours and keep the calendar corrcct.

Ten Days Out. This system proved to he wrong (for reasons T .vhich would take too long to explain here), and by 1582 the spring equinox was 10 days out of place, and the error grew every year. In that year Pope Gregory XTIT. instituted the Gregorian Calendar, suppressing the offending 10 days, and ordained that the number of leap years (i e.. years with the extra day included in February) should be reduced to three in every four hundred. This was done by making each centennial year (e.g., 1900) not a leap year, as it would be, unless it was a multiple of 400.

Unfortunately for the cause of uniformity, Henry VIII. was on the throne of England, and was not on the best of terms with the Papal power; so that England maintained the Julian Calendar despite tlv; change made by the rest of Christendom .

There was a difference of 10 day? between the English and Continental calendars until the middle of the 18th century, a difference which soon increased to 11 days. Into Conformity. The Act of 1750-1 brought England into conformity with the rest of Europe by adopting the Gregorian Calendar. The 11 extra days Avcrc suppressed, the year was made to begin on January 1 instead of, as before, on March 25, and the system of "intercalating" a day in every fourth year was altered, as we have explained above. The extra day in leap year was made February 20, and once more England was in conformity with the test of the world. All feast days are now calculated on the Gregorian Calendar, though the Ecclesiastical year begins, as before, on March 25. Thus Christmas Day and the date on which it falls are as much a matter of law as the Moratorium Act or the law of contracts.