Images: This one goes to ELEVEN

[Norgarth]

[Star Ranger4]

confound it, Norgarth! THESE are why I cant read this topic at this hour of night. its really bad for my nostrils, for one...

[hazard]

Ranger, just put whatever you are drinking away when you open up the thread.

Or drink less fizzy/alcoholic drinks.

[Norgarth]

[Norgarth]

[robkelk]

That last one reminds me of a line I once heard: "Doctors have a name for herbal remedies that actually work: 'medicine'."

[Norgarth]

[Star Ranger4]

Confound it Norgarth. I wasn't drinking anything and I STILL SNERKED so hard my nasal passages hurt from that batch!

[Norgarth]

[LilFluff]

So a while back there was a series of posts over on the fediverse regarding the insanity that is the history of our calendar. A subject that often starts with, "Why isn't DECember the tenth month?" I'm sure you've seen, "Why is the calendar weird this way?" posts before, but I have rarely seen any that went into this much detail. I screen captured the posts and got approval to bash them together into a single image or two, only the poster has gone ahead and compiled the whole thing and a little more into a gist over on github under the title, Why isn't the New Year on the Winter Solstice? So I'll just paste that here...

Why isn't the New Year on Winter Solstice?

“Why isn’t the new year on winter solstice?”

The answer, honestly, is that the Romans had no fucking idea how to run a calendar.

Like, seriously, people notice "OCTOber" and "DECEMber" and say, "hey, those mean 'eight' and 'ten', but they're the 10th and 12th months, what's up with that?".

If you've got a little more history, you'll know that July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar, and think, "oh, they added those two months and bumped the rest of the months back."

Nope. The Romans were way, way worse at calendars than that.

July and August were actually originally Quintilis and Sextilis - the fifth month and the sixth month. They were called this because the year traditionally started in March. So they had Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December.

Martius was named for Mars; Junius was named for Juno. We have no idea what Aprilis and Maius were named after. (No, really. We have some clues but beyond that it's just guesswork.) Then they got lazy and just numbered the months.

"But wait," you ask, "what about January and February?" Hold onto your butts, because calling the months by their numbers? Not even close to the laziest the Roman calendar got.

Between the end of December and the beginning of Martius were 50-odd intercalary days. They didn't have months associated with them. They were just sort of there.

I swear I am not making this up.

In addition, each month had either 30 or 31 days. I was going to say "alternated between" but I looked it up and nope, the Romans decided that was too easy, so it actually went:

• Martius 31
  
• Aprilis 30
  
• Maius 31
  
• Junius 30
  
• Quintilis 31
  
• Sextilis 30
  
• September 30
  
• October 31
  
• November 30
  
• December 30
  
• intercalary 51
  

Okay. This is where we are at the beginning of the Roman Republic.

Look at that. Remember it. You will look back on this and say "actually, that makes sense" after what comes next.

At the beginning of the Roman Republic, the Senate decided to fix the calendar. This was for two reasons:

1. The Romans thought the Greeks kicked ass, and wanted to emulate their calendar.
   
2. Count those days. You will notice that they add up to 355, which means that each year is actually ten (and change) days shorter than an actual solar year - which meant that by the time of the Republic, March was somewhere in the autumn.
   

So the Senate decided to do some reforming. They added two brand-new months to the calendar, Januarius and Februarius. Januarius was named after Janus, because his holiday fell about a week into the new month. (Janus was the god of doorways. We'll come back to him.) February was named after the Februa, a feast that fell in the middle of the new month and that had, in fact, long since been replaced by Lupercalia, an identical feast on the same date with a different name For Reasons.

The Senate also added an intercalary month, Mercedonius, the Month of Wages.

Yes, an intercalary month. I want to make sure that's clear.

They also changed the lengths of the months to better fit the Greek system. The Greeks had largely lunar months, so they alternated between 29-day and 30-day months. Once again, the Romans said, "you know, we like this, but it's too easy".

Look, the next part is going to go into "what the hell was wrong with them?" territory, just warning you.

This is the calendar the Roman Senate ended up with:

• Januarius 29
  
• Februarius 23
  
• Mercedonius 23
  
• THE REST OF FEBRUARIUS NO I AM NOT KIDDING 5
  
• Martius 31
  
• Aprilis 29
  
• Maius 31
  
• Junius 29
  
• Quintilis 31
  
• Sextilis 29
  
• September 29
  
• October 31
  
• November 29
  
• December 29
  

See what I meant about Mercedonius being an intercalary month? It's literally in the middle of February. Like, they got 3/4 of the way through February, got bored, and decided to do something else for a month and come back later.

Also, the Romans had caught on to leap years by this point, so every fourth year, Februarius had an extra day on the end, bringing its total to 29.

I want to be clear, though, that while they'd caught on to leap days, they still had not caught on to the length of the damn year. Count those days again: it's 378. By the time of poor Gaius Julius Caesar in 46 BC, the calendar was so fucked up that he needed three intercalary months to right it again.

Bonus: as @troubleMoney mentioned in the original thread, the priesthood - who until not long before Julius controlled the release of the calendar, meaning that people paid attention to them to know when the months started - would extend or contract years to keep politicians (who were on yearly terms) they liked in power or force politicians they didn't like out early.

The Julian reform

(which was ordered by our friend G.Jiddy but not, as far as we know, actually created by him) did three important things.

First, it added those three intercalary months to put the year back where it was supposed to be (March had slid around to the dead of winter).

Second, it got rid of Mercedonius, putting the year back at 355 days.

Third, it scattered ten new days throughout the year, which gave us the calendar we know today.

Julius's reforms still weren't quite right - the length of a year is just a fraction shorter than 365.25 days, which forced the Gregorian reform of 1582 (and hey, I remembered that year right on the first try). But it was good enough for government work, as they say.

(Incidentally, the Senate voted after Gaius Julius Caesar's death to rename Quintilis after him because he was born then, and likewise Sextilis after Augustus Caesar. The Caesars themselves had little to do with it. I mean, obviously G.Jiddy couldn't possibly have; he was dead at the time.)

So remember how we were talking about why the year doesn't start on the winter solstice?

A couple reasons. First, it never did (in the Roman tradition, anyway). It originally started in March, which contained the spring equinox but didn't start on it.

The start of the year was moved back to January for political reasons. Remember Janus, the god of doorways? It was considered auspicious for consuls to change out near his festival. His festival was nearest the kalends of January. So consuls wanted to start on the kalends of Januarius so they could start their term with an offering to the god of doorways, who would then grant an auspicious transition between consuls.

So why didn't the kalends of Januarius get moved back to the winter solstice? Because of Yule.

Not because the Romans celebrated Yule - it was a pagan1 holiday. The Romans celebrated Saturnalia. Saturnalia was originally on the 18th of December (or, as the Romans would have measured it, the 13th/12th/14th day before the kalends of Januarius), but it expanded, becoming a week-long event. This was partly because, well, people liked a party at the end of the calendar year (not to be confused with the end of the actual year pre-Republic) and partly because it was, consciously or not, taking over Yule.

Moving the kalends of Januarius back to the winter solstice would have necessarily moved Saturnalia away from the winter solstice - and the people who'd been celebrating Yule and were now celebrating Saturnalia didn't want that. So Saturnalia stayed where it was, and Januarius stayed where it was. And that's why the new year doesn't start on the winter solstice.

1 I use "pagan" here as the Romans would have; "paganus" meant someone who lived outside the city and practiced a non-Roman religion.

[ECSNorway]

The whole argument flashes me back to the stupid prophecy in Harry Potter. "Born as the Seventh Month dies..."

Hermione was born near the end of September, was she not?

[Bob Schroeck]

The 19th, actually. Talk Like a Pirate Day.

[Star Ranger4]

Actually, LilFluff, you can blame the roman catholic church for most of that, not the Romans themselves.

[Norgarth]

[Labster]

So a while back there was a series of posts over on the fediverse regarding the insanity that is the history of our calendar. A subject that often starts with, "Why isn't DECember the tenth month?" I'm sure you've seen, "Why is the calendar weird this way?" posts before, but I have rarely seen any that went into this much detail. I screen captured the posts and got approval to bash them together into a single image or two, only the poster has gone ahead and compiled the whole thing and a little more into a gist over on github under the title, Why isn't the New Year on the Winter Solstice? So I'll just paste that here...

Why isn't the New Year on Winter Solstice?

The one thing not mentioned there is that the current pontifex maximus got to determine when, and how long, the intercalary month of Mercedonius would be.  You know, because the chief bridge builder would be best at astronomy.  But what really happened is that if a guy he liked was in office as consul, add a month, otherwise, don't.

This meant that out in the colonies, they would literally not know what day it was until a ship from Rome came in and told them whether a month was added or not.  Since the various days of the months, and the ides affected when taxes were collected, this got to be more and more annoying as the empire grew.  It's not much of a wonder that as soon as the the political power of the republic was cut that Rome moved to something more sane pretty much immediately.

(Incidentally the title pontifex maximus went to the Emperors of Rome, but was lost when the Western Empire fell.  Popes picked it up later because they liked the symbolism of building bridges.)

I can think of a few Tropers who I'd like to be able to send the rightmost message to... but I think temporarily turning off anon posting caught most of them.

Mouseover text:

Spoiler

A mix of the two is even worse: 'Thanks for unsubscribing and helping us pare this list down to reliable supporters.'

As required by the re-use license, acknowledgment of source.

When that comic was the newest xkcd, I was basically implementing this very comic at work -- a way to show different messages to people as they left, based on their personal information.  Hopefully, we get to use all five.

Doesn't even need the second image, "Star Wars" and "Cats" being "New This Week" is a big enough joke.

[Norgarth]

[robkelk]

Anybody want to play Acceptance Speech Bingo?

[Star Ranger4]

would so hate you if every checkbox in that was not 100% true, Rob. *sighs*

[Norgarth]

[Black Aeronaut]

<snip>

<snip, snip, snip...>

1. I WANT THAT STOVE.

2. .... But what if you migrate between different methodologies?  I tend to gravitate towards the True Neutral option, but I've been known to do a little of all of the above.  Yes, even the Chaotic Evil option because a lot of copies of Jonathan Livingston Seagull had a horrible tendency to fall apart at the bindings.

3. PFFFFFTTT-HAAAHHHH!!!

4.  *Ahem*  https://topatoco.com/products/qc-scienceverb

"Pay no attention to the cat sciencing through space. She was sciencing where she wasn't supposed to science and it is our hope that in the end her sciencing will help further the cause of science."

[Norgarth]

[hazard]

Yeah, when there's water coming out of your electrical sockets... you've got a problem.

One of which is that part of your electrical net is permanently shorted out until you can plug the leak and let it dry. Another part of it is that you've got a leak in either your water pipes or in the construction's water barriers.

[DHBirr]

Once when I was in the Army, I was one of two sergeants who had to clean up our office latrine (restroom for you civilian pukes) one day.  (There were almost no lower enlisted at our teaching-oriented unit.)  Toilet paper was mounted on a peculiar arrangement; I can't recall the design well enough to describe it, but removing the cardboard tube at the center once the roll was fully expended couldn't, as far as I could figure out, be done without tearing the tube apart.  It went onto the roller just fine, by squeezing a part of the mechanism, but then the roll blocked access to that mechanism when it came time to remove it.

So this particular day, the other guy had never had latrine duty at this unit before, and he asked me how to take a used-up roll off the roller.  I didn't choose my words well:  "Just rip it off." 

A horrible screech of tearing light metal followed, as he pulled the roller and its brackets completely off the toilet-stall partition.

-----
Up, lad, up!  We've villages to pillage, maidens to slay, and dragons to rescue!

[Norgarth]

[Norgarth]