258 NEW YEAR'S DAY AND THE CALENDAR 



Romans, and that wonderful man Julius Caesar had a 

 great deal to do with it; modern Europe adopted his 

 arrangement of the year or calendar. But the Jews have 

 their own calendar and their own New Year's Day, which 

 varies from year to year from our September 5th to our 

 October 7th. It is, however, to tliem always the first 

 day of the month Tishri, and the first day of their new 

 year. The Mahomedans took the date of the flight of 

 Mohammed from Mecca to Medina — the night of July 

 15th, 622 A.D. — as the commencement of their " era," 

 and its anniversary is the first day of their month Muhar- 

 ram and the first day of their year — their New Year's 

 Day. As, although they reckon twelve months to the 

 year, their months are true lunar months, and are not 

 corrected as are those in use by us (as I will explain 

 below), their year consists of 354 days 8 hours, and so 

 does not run parallel to our year at all. Their New 

 Year's Day, which began by being our July i6th, was in 

 the next year coincident with our July 6th, then in three 

 successive years it occurred on different days of June, 

 and so on through May, April, and the preceding months, 

 so that in thirty-two and a half of our years their New 

 Year's Day has run through all our months and comes 

 back again to July. 



So much for New Year's Days ; they are arbitrary selec- 

 tions, and though the Roman New Year's Day, or Januarj' 

 ist, has been precisely defined and fixed by the determina- 

 tion by astronomers of the position of the earth on that 

 day in its revolution around the sun, yet the original selec- 

 tion of January ist for the beginning of the year seems to 

 have been merely the result of previous errors and negli- 

 gence in attempting to fix the winter solstice (which now 

 comes out as December 22nd). This is the day when the 

 sun IS lowest and the day shortest ; after it has passed 

 the suD appears gradually to acquire a new power, and 



