Reply #8: For a while, I was fascinated by the entire subject. The calendar of the Western world

[No Elephants]

went through one mess after another. The original Egyptian calendar (before the Greeks "fixed" it) and the Iranian calendar were impeccably correct because they were based on astronomy, while the West arbitrarily divided the year up into months and days. The solar year does not divide neatly.

The people who came up with the Gregorian calendar tried to solve that problem with leap years. By that time, though, the vernal equinox had regressed back to March 11. So, the Western world simply dropped ten days in October 1582 and it was done by papal bull, which seems so bizarre to us today.

And the early colonists of this country considered starting the year on January 1 "popish," which would have been anathema to them. They started their year on March 25. Then at some point, they just switched, which apparently causes geneaologists a lot of grief for some reason.

I found it all very interesting. Then, after I had jumped from link to link to link learning all this stuff, probably hundreds of links, a book came out, putting all the info in one place.