february

[cymro47]

why are there 28days in february?

[Hippy]

There was uncertainty in deciding the time for Easter in the Roman Catholic calendar and avoiding clashes with the Jewish Passover on the 15th day of Nisan where the start of months is determined by a New Moon.

During the deliberations in the 16th Century, the 365 and a quarter days per year were divided into twelve months with alternating months of 30 and 31 days. So that would mean 6x30 plus 6x31 = 180+186 = 366 days. Whoops, too many. So let's lop off a day from one of the months and February got the chop ending up with 29. This now kept the vernal equinox to March 21st, its date set at the First Council of Nicaea of 325. So then there were: Jan 30; Feb 29; Mar 31; Apr 30; May 31; Jun 30; Jul 31; Aug 30; Sep 31; Oct 30; Nov 31; Dec 30. This nice pattern was upset by disagreements amongst the Papal people and August was given an extra day because July was named from Julius Caesar and August from Augustus Caesar, and the worthies thought that neither should be more important than the other. So then the pattern became: Jul 31; Aug 31; Sep 30; Oct 31; Nov 30 and Dec 31. This then gave 5 30 day months and 6 31 day months and one 29 day month. 5x30 = 150 6x31 = 186 so 150+186+29=365. January got an extra day and poor old February was the loser again. The leap day is added to February following the Roman practice of adding February 24th (bissextile), not 1 in every 4 years as you might expect but 97 times in 400. Easter was then declared as the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the vernal equinox.

The Council of Trent approved this plan in 1563 for correcting the calendar errors, and to prevent future drift. This would allow for a more consistent and accurate scheduling of the feast of Easter. The Pope at the time was called Gregory and it is his name that was attached to the calendar. It was not implemented everywhere at the same time, England came late in 1752, and the last to change was Turkey in 1926 and parts of China in 19

[zimzam]

Jeez Hippy !
Can you say all that again, s-l-o-w-l-y?

[ianess]

Wow! That was quite an answer! Thank you.

[Huderon]

ummm ... Hippy you've described the why of the origin of the Gregorian calendar, with a bit other stuff mixed in.

Before the Gregorian calendar, people used the Julian calendar which was introduced by Julius Caesar to sort out the mess that the Roman Republican calendar had become.

The original Roman calendar started in March and had 10 months, 6 of 30 days and 4 of 31 days (giving a total of 304 days) with an uncounted gap between December and March. This was amended to add two extra months (January and February) and increased the total number of days in the year to 355.

When the Roman Republican calendar was March, May, July and October were left with 31 days, January, April, June, August, September, November and December all had 29 days leaving February with 28 days.

This means that the Roman calendar was basically a lunar calendar which came up 10.25 days short of the solar calendar, so to prevent it from getting too far out of step with the seasons an extra month of 27 or 28 days was added every two years between February 23rd and February 24th, and in historical times the last 5 days of February were dropped.

The calendar adopted by Julius Caesar allowed for 365 days in the year ... the extra days being added to the end of existing months but leaving February with 28 days. To get round the missing quarter of a day each year, an extra day was to be added to the year every 4th year, and in line with the original rule of the Roman calendar, it was added to February, but as an extra day during the month not at the end of the month.

There is a very long article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica about claendars, which is where I grabbed the information from, The link, if anyone is interested is http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-59347/cal endar and the stuff about the Julian calendar is on page