214 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



my mind that as Christmas Day was kept like Sunday, the boon of a 

 fixed almanac and Christmas Holidays always extended over the week 

 end without splitting the week, might be secured if we simply kept its 

 name as " Christmas Day," and relieved it from being enumerated as 

 a day of the week — a " Dies-non" mserted as a public holiday between 

 Sunday and Monday, where it naturally occurs in the year 19 IG. 



Further, I saw that by similarly giving "Leap-Day" its proper 

 name and letting it " leap the week-day name " as a "Dies-non " and 

 public holiday, (rightly due to salaried servants who work that day for 

 nothing) , we might by relieving those exceptional year days from being 

 enmnerated as date of the month, permanently win the many increased 

 facilities and benefits which the easiest possible working month of four 

 weeks would always bring by ending on Saturday, — and establish the 

 easiest possible permanent almanac. Thus the golden key to solv« our 

 almanac difficulties and perfect the calendar appeared to be found in 

 the " Dies-non," and simpler months. Those form the essential fea- 

 tures of the various proposals which have since been made to improve 

 our yearly register of time, as the source of the mischief in changing 

 the week-day names through all the dates in each year and separating 

 Christmas and ISTew Year's Day from the week-end, was then located 

 in the odd 365th day beyond the fifty-two weeks of the year. 



Possibly the last day of the year as a " Dies-non," or duplicate 

 Saturday might be preferred by business people for stock-taking, or 

 New Year's Day be preferable to some nations; but the prospective 

 advantages of adopting Christmas Day as the " Dies-non " at this stage 

 in the world's history seem very much more important (for reasons 

 which cannot be discussed in this condensed paper), in view of the 

 earlier adoption of the simplified calendar by that more than two-thirds 

 of the world's population who now use lunar almanacs, as in India, 

 China, Japan, etc., they could only adopt it when the moon was new 

 at the winter solstice to which Christmas is the nearest, and would 

 naturally revert in subsequent years by omitting three leap-days, after 

 the advantages of the proposed almanac lead those nations (who are 

 now rapidly being aroused to realize the practical benefits of such 

 improvements), to negotiate by international conference for general 

 adoption. 



We should remember that Christmas was not fixed as the exact 

 date of Christ's birth, bait because the first new moon after the Winter 

 Solstice fihone on December 25th, when the first public celebration of 

 that festival necessitated long pilgrimages and the moon was the monthly 

 guide to the masses of the illiterate people. For the same all-powerful, 

 practical reason, Julius Caesar fixed January 1st to begin the new era, 

 ])ecause the " first new moon after the winter solstice " then shone, 



