KPIΣTOΣ ANEΣTI

EASTER GREETINGS
to
All My Greek Friends
and Friends of Greece

I'm sure you know, but if you don't - and have ever wondered - the reason why the Greek (and Russian) Orthodox Church celebrates Easter at a different time to most of us, is because it still calculates the date of the festival using the Julian Calendar, while the rest of us determine the date of Easter using the Gregorian calendar.

The Julian calendar was designed by the astronomer Sosigenes and introduced in 46 BC, by the emperor Julius Caesar. It was this calendar that, for the first time, divided the year into 365 days grouped into 12 months and with an extra (leap year) day added to February every four years.

A reform of the Julian calendar was first proposed by the Calabrian doctor, Aloysius Lilius, and decreed under a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII - after whom it was named - on 24 February 1582.

There are lots of fascinating facts about these two calendars and how and why they were devised and the curious might care to check out Wikipedia's entries on the Julian and the Gregorian calendars while the exceptionally curious will find even more about both - as well as calendars used in Aztec, Bahia, Egyptian, Hebrew, Indian, Islamic and a other cultures - at Calendopedia: The Encyclopedia of Calendars!

It's all a reminder, I suppose, of both how arbitrary are our notions of the passage of time and, of course, how utterly fleeting it is...

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh, yes, and don't forget to check out Buttons' thoughts on the subject...

Image: The Church of St John the Baptist, Pothia, Kalymnos, Greece
© Brian Sibley 2006