Oh yes, it is! - Oh no, it isn't!!

Merry Christmas - unless that is you are a traditionalist of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in which case today is only the 12th December, and you have several shopping days still to go. How come? Well, the basis of the calendar we use today is a calendar developed back in the time of Julius Caesar, and for that reason called the Julian calendar. This calendar was based upon the calculation that a year - that is, the time it takes the earth to go round the sun and get back to where it started - is 365¼ days. Unfortunately it isn't - it's about 11 minutes short of that, which means that from the outset the "paper" calendar lagged behind the "real" calendar by around 11 minutes a year every year, which very quickly built up into a serious discrepancy. It was quite some time before this was fully appreciated, but in 1582, by which time the two calendars were 10 days out from each other, the then Pope - Gregory - introduced what has become known as the Gregorian calendar, which put matters right (well, nearly). Problem was that, despite it being a sensible and much needed reform, the fact that it was introduced by a Pope immediately put the backs up of the Orthodox and Protestant countries, who simply refused to go along with it. Over time, most of them saw sense and adopted the new calendar, but the Orthodox churches have never officially done so, and although it's something which is continually being talked about, the diehards still go by the Julian calendar, and their December 25th will be in thirteen days time - January 7th to the rest of us.