Decolonising the calendar on Lady Day

If you have ever spent hours chasing invoices and making payments to meet end of financial year deadlines, perhaps you have been too busy to wonder why such a seemingly arbitrary date as 6 April marks the start of a new financial year in the UK. The explanation spans empires.

The Annunciation in a mural at the Black Rock Transfiguration Anglican church in Tobago, West Indies. Both the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel are depicted as people of colour. Credit: https://thebookman.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/the-annunciation-at-black-rock-tobago/

Lady Day, the original deadline

By chance, I am writing this on 25 March, Lady Day – or the Feast of the Annunciation in the Christian calendar, exactly nine months before Christmas Day – considered to be when the archangel Gabriel informed the Virgin Mary that she was to be the mother of a son.

Lady Day was a quarter day, one of the four days of the year  when rents and debts were paid, and when many job contracts started. In a time before mass literacy, it was a sensible way of keeping track by using key dates in the religious calendar.

Until 1792, 25 March was the start of the New Year in England and Wales. But where did the extra 12 days come from?

Calendars and Control 

Until 1792, 25 March was the start of the New Year in England and Wales - add 11 days and you reach the 5 April. I’ll explain why that happened and how it eventually became 6 April below…

The calendar that Britain and much of the Western world operates under today is known as the Gregorian calendar, but that is a relatively recent development. To confuse things, the British financial year echoes the older Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, who insisted it be used from 1 January 45 BCE. Who says the calendar doesn’t need decolonising!

The Julian calendar was in use in Europe for around 1,600 years, during which time the dates got a bit out of sync with the actual seasons - it lost 11 minutes and 14 seconds a year. Not much, but by the sixteenth century, this added up to around 10 days. It became very difficult for Christians to work out when Easter fell and it affected the agricultural seasons, which often used the markers of religious days to govern planting and harvesting.

A lot of maths and a bit of fancy footwork was involved in trying to balance things out... So much so that in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decreed that a new calendar be implemented. It was named after him – if Julius Caesar could do it, why not the Pope. The Gregorian calendar was adopted fairly swiftly across Europe, especially in Catholic countries. The then independent Scotland started using the Gregorian calendar in 1600.

Detail of Pope Gregory's tomb by Camillo Rusconi; Antonio Lilio is genuflecting before the pope, presenting his printed calendar. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gregorianscher_Kalender_Petersdom.jpg

A New New Year

However, England (and therefore Wales by default) refused to adopt it, having officially fallen out with the Catholic Church and large chunks of Europe’s ruling elite when Henry VIII wanted a divorce from Katherine of Aragon and made himself head of the Protestant Church of England a few decades earlier.  In Ireland in the 1590s, some Catholics began to use the Gregorian calendar as a sign of their defiance against the Protestant English colonisers.

After 170 years, Britain eventually came to see the sense in being part of Europe and joined the Gregorian party in 1752, via Parliament passing of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (in 1751) - by which time the date on the continent was 11 days ahead of Britain.

In 1752, New Year’s Day in Britain was moved to 1 January. 11 days were removed from the month of September to bring dates into line with the parts of the world already using the Gregorian calendar - the day after 2 September became 14 September.

The UK Treasury - not keen on losing revenue - kept the tax year at 365 days and still taxed people for the 11 days they hadn’t actually had. As you would expect, there were angry protests but the legend of calendar riots are a good apocryphal embroidering of the story. So, the start of the next tax year was shifted from 25 March to 5 April. In 1800, the Treasury made another adjustment: the tax year start moved again by one day - to 6 April. In 1900, the decision was made to just stop the adjustments there.

Dr. Martens "Annunciation" boots featuring Giannicola Di Paolo’s c.1435 painting, The Annunciation, printed on classic 1460 Pascal boots. The Archangel Gabriel (back boot) is handing a lily to the Virgin Mary (front boot).  Model’s own.

Intriguingly, the National Trust ends their financial year on February 28th (or 29th in a leap year) for some reason. No dictators or popes seem to have been involved in that decision…

We would love to hear about any other colonial calendar curiosities.

Happy Lady Day and may all your invoices be paid speedily.