Isn’t it easier to let a year start at the start of a season change instead of in the middle of a season?
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The solstice is the 21st of December. Mistakes were made, but it’s close enough.
https://www.livescience.com/32913-why-does-the-new-year-start-on-january-1st.html
It’s kind of arbitrary
>Isn’t it easier to let a year start at the start of a season change instead of in the middle of a season?
What would that help, do you think?
Would it actually help though?
The Western year roughly corresponds with the winter solstice – the shortest day in the year. While it is obviously slightly out of sync with the first of January, it is something that is very repeatable – it happens at the same time of year, every year, and is something that is easily measured with a basic clock. So it is a nice clear reference point that everyone can agree on.
The changing of a season however is something that can vary wildly – because the seasons are not only based on the time of year, but also the weather at that point they can shift quite wildly. One year we may still be deep into winter with snow falling in April, the next week will have an early spring with flowers appearing in February. This will also vary depending on where you are on the planet – up in the North spring will start much later in the year than further south nearer the equator where they may not even really experience winter as such and the seasons are far more consistent.
So to set the year based on the actual season is pretty impossible, while the soltice had given us a nice, repeatable start point so that everyone can sync up their calendars worldwide.
It is also notable that the day we choose as January first, how long a month is, or how many months we have is completely arbitrary. The only important parts are that the length of a day matches one rotation of the earth, and a year matches the length of one orbit around the sun. The rest we coild eadily divide however we want. Get rid of months and just count the days in a year from 1 to 365? Change a week to be ten days long, or have a day split into 100 units? There is no real reason why we couldn’t, but we have created the calendar as it currently is based on what was practically for humans as a way to keep track of days, weeks and seasons, so we have standardised it and stuck with it so nobody gets confused.
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