Making 1^st January a more meaningful day

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

29 December 2013

Earlier this month, I received a number of emails asking me to comment of the “special” date 11^th December 2013. It was considered special because when written in the shortened form, it came out as “11/12/13” – a numerical sequence of consecutive numbers. The reality is that, there was nothing special about that date, indeed the Americans wrote it as 12/11/13. For them, sequential numbers appeared on November 12, 2013.

Nevertheless, it reminded me of my university days when we celebrated a friend Sello’s birthday on 6^th July 1989 – on the cake we inscribed it as “6/7/89”. But apart from the birthday celebrations, there wasn’t any other special event that day.

The same argument applies to so-called special anniversaries; the Silver, Gold and Diamond Jubilees. The reality is that apart from spending more money on the celebrations, Kenya’s 50^th independence festivities were not much different from the 49^th. It was the same routine of marching soldiers, traditional and contemporary music, and aeroplanes flying nearby!

In fact, when you think about it, Christmas day is also nothing special: it is not the date that Jesus Christ was born (to this day, there is no agreement even on the year of his birth!) and it has no seasonal significance. It’s just a day like most of others; but Christians have chosen 25^th December to commemorate the undisputed birth of Christ – he was certainly born, but nobody knows exactly when!

Interestingly, a seasonally significant event occurs just four days before Christmas: 21^st December is midwinter’s day in the northern hemisphere and midsummer in the south. It was the shortest day of the year for the northerners and the longest for the southerners.

Now that gives me an idea; what if we all agreed to move the start of the year and make it coincide with that day? It wouldn’t be the first time that this kind of thing is done.

A shift of the start and end of the year was done in 1582 when the modern calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XII. In the catholic countries of Europe, did the change on various dates starting from 4^th October that year. They jumped eleven days forward: from Thursday 4^th October the following day was Friday 15^th October. Yes; the dates 5^th to 14^th October 1582 do NOT exist in their histories!

In the Great British Empire (which then included present-day USA), the change was done almost 2 centuries later, in the year 1751. For them it was more dramatic because they also needed to realign their New Years Day to rest of Europe.

The first day of the British year used to be March 25 – logically chosen to coincide with the Northern Midsummer’s day. So the year 1751 was shortened by three months; it ran from March 25, 1751 to December 31, 1751 [instead of March 24].

Secondly, eleven days were also removed in September 1752. Wednesday 2^nd September, was followed by Thursday 14^th September 1752.

Can’t we do a similar shift and declare that the coming year will run from 1^st January to 20^th December 2014? Then after that, instead of going to 21^st December, we jump to 1^st January 2015. It’s just an idea…