Why is it that the seasons do not align with the beginning/end of the calendar year? For instance, winter in the northern hemisphere (summer in the southern hemisphere) runs from the beginning of December to the end of February. Why is this? I would have thought that when people were inventing calendars way back in the distant past that they would have aligned the beginning of the year with the changing of the seasons or maybe one of the solstices or equinoxes. But it seems like the change of seasons and solstices/equinoxes occur at kind of arbitrary times..
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Calendars are human constructs. Additionally, there are hundreds of calendars still in use today. If you look back in history, there are actually some calendars that focus on the seasons and equinoxes, etc. The truth is that a good majority of the things we consider as fixed in regard to time and timekeeping actually aren’t. This is the reason we have leap-days and leap-seconds. In the same way most of the US changes their clocks twice a year, it’s entirely possible that we could choose to move our calendar and change how long months are, what day the weeks start on, etc. Some have proposed a calendar where every month is 30 days, and each quarter has an extra day added for the equinox/solstice. This would turn into a massive, global logistical nightmare though.
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