The Calendar

Early in history man began to count time by days, months and seasons. It was the beginning of a calendar. When he learned the movement of, the sun better he began to use the year to count time.

The Greeks began their calendar from the Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Romans counted time from the foundation of their - city in 753 BC. Every country counted time from different events which were the most important for the people.

In 46 BC Julius Caesar fixed the year at 365¼ days, giving every fourth year an extra day. But an extra day every four years was too much and by the XVI century the calendar had thirteen extra days. So ten days were taken back.

Then people decided: three times in every 400 years people need not give an extra day to the year ending in 00. Only in the year 5000 there will be one extra day in the year.

The First Month of the Year

The word January came from Janus — the Roman god of doors. Every door has two sides — one looks forward and the other — backward. So Janus had two faces — one on the front and one on the back of his head. With these faces he could look back to the past year and look forward to the coming year.

The first month of the year had a lot of names. The Dutches called it frosty month; the Saxons first called it wolf month, because there was very little food for the wolves and they were very aggressive in this month. Later they called it the first month. In the French calendar it was called snow month.