CHRISTMAS AND THE LAW

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 32, 14 December 1945, Page 11 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS AND THE LAW

By a Barrister

The law covets many curious things and there is scarcely a department of our lives which is not affected by it. Even the calendar and the date, of Christmas which many people might consider were merely customary ? are the subjects of an Act of Parliament. Since the passing of the Calendar (new style) Act in 1750, and the amending Act of 1751 (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 a legal one, but its history is interesting and worth knowing. Before 1852 the year was regulated by the Julian Calendar throughout Christendom. The problem, ever since astronomers and .mathematicians began to work on it, had been to reconcile the civil year to the solar year the latter consisting of 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 24 and 25 ? in order to absorb the extra six hours and keep the calendar correct. Ten Days. Out This system proved to be wrong (for reasons which 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 XIII. 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 hun- ' dred. This was done by making each centennial year (e.g., 1900) not a leap year as it would ordinarily 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 the change made by the rest of Christendom. There was a difference of 10 days 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 were 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 wc have explained above. The extra clay In leap year was made February 29, and once more England was in conformity with the rest of the world. All feast days are now calculated on the Calendar, though the Ecclesiastical year begins, as before, on March 25. Thus Christinas Day and the date on which it falls are as much a matter of law as the Moratorium Act or the law of contracts.