Caller: My question is about Christmas. If the December the 25th marks the Birth of Christ, shouldn't the following day be the first of the year?
Pastor Doug: Ok. I want you to take a deep breath and concentrate. This is going to get confusing.
Caller: All right - I'm ready.
Pastor Doug: Our calendar is a convoluted mess, and we can thank the Romans. For instance, the word 'Decca' means 10 - decade, Dias in Spanish. December is supposed to be the 10th month. October, Octagon, Ocho should be the eighth month. September, Septiembre should be the seventh month. Nuevo, November should be the ninth month but the Romans started fighting with the calendar to accommodate the Caesars and the gods.
For instance, Julius Caesar thought that he was a god. He wanted a month named after him - we got July. Augustus Caesar didn't think that was fair so he took the month of August, but it didn't have as many days as July, so he took days off of February so that he could compete with July. And I could go on and on. So the calendar is very convoluted.
But, just for the record, and you know it's interesting - I shared this weekend with my church this very subject - though Christians can, and should, study what the Bible says about the Birth of Christ and the first advent and the gifts that God gave, we ought to be intelligent and know that Jesus was not born the 25th of December.
Caller: Yes I'm aware of that but I was thinking since we know inaudible, we can make that change to the calendar and make it so that there's not another week after the 25th.
Pastor Doug: Well you know quite logically, you do have a good point. There are really two calendars - there should be two calendars.
Caller: The New Year is what marks the dividing point of old and new cross talk occurring.
Pastor Doug: Winter solstice. Well a calendar should either be marked by the sun or the moon. All the great civilizations either had a solar or lunar calendar. We technically are under a solar calendar - but because of that, since the 21st of December is really the lowest day of the year for the sun, you would think that the 22nd of December would be the first day of the New Year when the sun begins its new cycle. And many calendars of the world had it that way.
But, don't ask me. I can't even tell you why they decided to start the year with January. Like I said, the Romans did so much changing of the calendar and we're right now living under the Gregorian calendar. Pope Gregory XIII made the final change that I know of in history. And that's why we've got a leap year, to make up that one quarter of a day that we're missing every 365 days to have a perfect solar year.
Caller: Ok.