Hi JB3,

You're quite close to the mark. Counter to popular believe, Old Christmas has nothing to do with Epiphany, except that by shear coincidence they fall more or less on the same date.

Long, long time ago ... I can still remember how, music used to make me smile. Erm.

Long, long time ago, the Romans had a calender which was more or less moon-based, in which they introduced a leap-month every now and then to keep the calender year more or less the same as the solar year. For various reasons, this calender was no longer running synchronous with the actual seasons. In fact, it was several months ahead; the start of the calender year, which was the beginning of March, fell long before the solar start of the year, the spring time equinox.

Julius Ceasar introduced, in 46/45 BC, a calender that had months slightly longer than a moon, so a single leap-day, at the end of a year, the end of February, would be enough to correct the year. At the introduction he also needed to correct the accumulated mistake, by introducing in the last year old style two extra months. However, to avoid having a year of fourteen months, he declared the year would from now on start in January, instead of March.

Now, this system is not perfect, and initially its implementation wasn't perfect either, but things were not all that bad, so in 325 the Council of Nicaea saw no particular problem in defining the date of Easter as: The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, even though at the time the calender was already slightly behind. However, a small error that kept accumulating, meant that around 1582 pope Gregorius XIII was beginning to feel Easter was celebrated on the wrong day. By his time, the calender was 10 days behind, compared to 325! He introduced the Gregorian Calender, which only differed in the timing of the leap-day: There would no longer be leap-days in century years, except if that year could be divided by 400. This would keep Easter in its place for millennia, once he correct the calender back to that of 325. So, he ordered that one time only, every one should skip 10 days.

Will we get to the point? Is the pope Catholic? Yes, he is, but not all countries are. So while some countries followed the instruction immediately, other, Protestant, countries were more hesitant. For example, it wasn't until 1701 that we in Friesland changed the calender. By then the error had grown to 11 days. When we did change it, we had a slight contractual problem: All contracts started on the First of May, and lasted a year. Nobody was going to pay a year's wages for only 354 days' work, so the full year had to be served till the old First of May, and then the new contracts could be entered into, which would again last a year, and so on. Thus came into existence the day of "Old May", 11 days after the new First of May.

In the British Empire lived even more Protestants that didn't want anything to do with all of this, so it wasn't until 1752 that reluctantly, Great Britain reformed its calender by skipping 11 days. But many Protestants agreed with the Pope, in that they believed the Christian feasts should be observed on the correct day! The difference was, to them the right days were those indicated by the calender as it was in 1751. Thus, similar to the Frisian case, days like Old Halloween and Old Christmas came into existence.

Now, curiously, by counting 11 days you'll find Old Christmas should be the day before Epiphany, and in the carol mentioned above this is indeed the case. Today, however, it's celebrated on Epiphany, or similarly. I've never seen an explanation for that. The only thing I can think of is that by 1800 still the old, Julian, calender was followed by those observing the Old Christmas, and thus the 11 day difference became a 12 day difference. This may seem a bit unlikely on the surface, but it would have occurred within the same generation, and in fact to this day Eastern Orthodox churches use the Julian calender. As this generation might have lived in the knowledge that they would have to take notice in 1800, this doesn't seem an impossible scenario to me.

In the nineteenth century, Christmas, which had been in decline, grew in popularity again, on the 25th of December, but the other date is still known as Old Christmas, and for those who observe it, it is still associated with older Christmas traditions, some of which are in fact even older Mid-winter traditions. By coincidence, the days of Christmas and Epiphany are twelve days apart, which is why Old Christmas is often considered to be the same day as Epiphany. At least one alternative custom exists, where Old Christmas is now celebrated on the Saturday closest to its real date. In this way, the attempts to keep Old Christmas on the same date have now given Old Christmas a date that varies yearly. History plays strange tricks sometimes.

Bye
                                                                Mysha