Do the Christian Roots of Secular Time Matter?
Some History and Thoughts On The Gregorian New Year
I believe I was in middle school when I stopped explicitly counting years by Jesus Christ.1 Up until then I remember that some years were marked BC, “Before Christ” and some were AD, “anno Domini,” which is in Medieval Latin and commonly translated as “in the year of our Lord.” The idea is that Jesus of Nazareth was born somewhere around year 1 (although scholars now estimate somewhere between years 4 and 6) and all history is relative to him.
I don’t remember exactly how this change happened. Maybe I was corrected after having written BC on a paper, or maybe my teacher pointed out that a textbook was using BC/AD and wanted to set the record politically straight. “We will now be using BCE instead, meaning, ‘before the common era’ and CE to mean ‘common era.’ Because not everyone is Christian.” I remember thinking, okay, whatever. You can rename it all you want but it still means the same thing. And how much better is it to call it the “common era?” Might that be sort of… worse, to start equating Jesus’s birth to when “common” things started happening? What’s so common about immaculate conception?!
In the Jewish tradition we are in the year 5783. What happened 5783 years ago? The creation of the universe. Of course that’s not scientifically true, but this way of counting has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and it has a very different understanding of “before” and “after.” These are not just two completely different calendars, with different months and connections to the sun and moon. These are completely different histories, belief systems, and cultures.
The calendar we use in mainstream western life today is called the Gregorian calendar. You know, January, February, March. The year is almost 2023. Where did this calendar come from? According to Amy Tikkanen, The general corrections manager (big job) from Encyclopedia Britannica, this calendar’s origins can be traced back as far as the 600s BCE/BC:
According to tradition, during his reign (c. 715–673 BCE) [Roman king Numa Pompilius] revised the Roman republican calendar so that January replaced March as the first month. It was a fitting choice, since January was named after Janus, the Roman god of all beginnings; March celebrated Mars, the god of war. (Some sources claim that Numa also created the month of January.) However, there is evidence that January 1 was not made the official start of the Roman year until 153 BCE.2
First important point: this calendar was originally conceived as a Roman calendar. Makes sense. Then what?
In 46 BCE Julius Caesar introduced more changes, though the Julian calendar, as it became known, retained January 1 as the year’s opening date. With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the use of the Julian calendar also spread. However, following the fall of Rome in the 5th century CE, many Christian countries altered the calendar so that it was more reflective of their religion, and March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation) and December 25 (Christmas) became common New Year’s Days.3
Christmas as New Year’s Day also makes sense when we think about the years being counted from “the year of our Lord.” Convenient to have them so close or just a coincidence? What happened next?
It later became clear that the Julian calendar required additional changes due to a miscalculation concerning leap years. The cumulative effect of this error over the course of several centuries caused various events to take place in the wrong season. It also created problems when determining the date of Easter. Thus, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a revised calendar in 1582. In addition to solving the issue with leap years, the Gregorian calendar restored January 1 as the start of the New Year. While Italy, France, and Spain were among the countries that immediately accepted the new calendar, Protestant and Orthodox nations were slow to adopt it. Great Britain and its American colonies did not begin following the Gregorian calendar until 1752. Before then they celebrated New Year’s Day on March 25.”4
In short, the Gregorian calendar was created to help seasonally situate Easter, which is of course not just pastel color appreciation day, but the commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Resurrection Sunday. In fact, because the calendar was remade by Pope Gregory XIII (read: The Catholic Church), it was religiously contentious from the start. Jennie Cohen of History.com writes,
Though Pope Gregory’s papal bull reforming the calendar had no power beyond the Catholic Church, Catholic countries—including Spain, Portugal and Italy—swiftly adopted the new system for their civil affairs. European Protestants, however, largely rejected the change because of its ties to the papacy, fearing it was an attempt to silence their movement. It wasn’t until 1700 that Protestant Germany switched over, and England held out until 1752. Orthodox countries clung to the Julian calendar until even later, and their national churches have never embraced Gregory’s reforms.5
The Protestants saw the Gregorian calendar, at least initially, as an overtly Catholic thing. How could they not, it came from the Pope, for God’s sake! But my questions are less about how it was received at the time and more about how we think about the Gregorian calendar now. Do its Christ-centered roots matter? Does changing BC to BCE make any difference?
Today, the Gregorian calendar isn’t even called that. It’s just the calendar. Everything else is supplemental to mainstream America – Lunar New Year, Rosh Hashanah, etc. Likewise, the Gregorian year is just the year. 2023. What was once deeply Christian has become blandly secular. What was once re-organized around Easter is now the flat white grid holding our society together, at least temporally.
Some might say, great, we need a universal system of timekeeping or else we wouldn’t be able to communicate, do business, travel, or even meet up for coffee. I agree, we need a shared way (*cough* metric system *cough*). What’s interesting is that the universal way is, in many ways, not universal at all, but extremely particular. Has “universal” gotten too comfortable a substitute for Christian?
This is making me think about Christmas as well, and how many people would argue that Christmas is no longer a Christian holiday, but just a seasonal festival (of course for many it still has deep religious significance). Is it that Christmas has become truly secular or have we all been stewing in a Christian broth for so long we can no longer recognize just how cooked we are? Same question about Puritanical sexual ethics and etiquette.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely celebrate the Gregorian new year. I love to get dressed up and drink bubbles or stay up and watch the ball drop from the comfort of my couch just like the next guy. New years kisses. Fireworks. Resolutions. Bad movies starring incredibly deep ensemble casts including Ashton Kutcher, Hilary Swank, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Ludacris? I’m all in. But when I stop to think about the origins of this timekeeping, I can’t help but pause to consider where the American context comes from and how nothing is without its point of view. The new year we all take for granted has a point of view whether we recognize it on a daily basis or not.
And let us not forget that before it was Christian, this calendar in question was pagan. As stated above, “January was named after Janus, the Roman god of all beginnings; March celebrated Mars, the god of war.” Even Easter is a combination pagan and Christian rituals and symbols. Christianity didn’t arise or spread inside of some imaginary historical vacuum or default setting. The truth is, there is no default setting. Even the default setting on a new computer is not blank but intentionally drawing upon generations of design and technological advancement.
So do the Christian/pagan roots of “secular” time matter? I think so, to a point. Yet, I conclude this essay feeling kind of how I felt that day in middle school when I first wrote BCE. A little ambivalent. Sure, more reflective and curious about what I take for granted. But when that clock strikes midnight, I’ll shout, “Happy New Year!” and probably forget I wrote this at all.
Although it started more generally in the 18th century. “Throughout the 18th and 19th century, "common era" was used frequently with a respectful nod to Christianity in phrases such as "the common era of Christ" or "the common era of the Incarnation" until, by the late 20th century, it again reverted to simply "common era".” Joshua J. Mark,. "The Origin & History of the BCE/CE Dating System." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified March 27, 2017. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1041/the-origin--history-of-the-bcece-dating-system/.
Amy Tikkanen, Why Does the New Year Start on January 1? Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-the-new-year-start-on-january-1 accessed Dec 22, 2022.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jennie Cohen, 6 Things You May Not Know About the Gregorian Calendar: Explore the history of the Gregorian calendar, which Britain and its colonies adopted 260 years ago. , AUG 22, 2018, ORIGINAL:SEP 13, 2012. https://www.history.com/news/6-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-gregorian-calendar, accessed Dec 22, 2022.