[LEAPSECS] leap year rule ambiguity

[Gerard Ashton]

I don't think the original poster had this in mind, but there is a 
Revised Julian Calendar which is described
in Wikipedia, and is equivalent to the Gregorian Calendar until AD 2800. 
It has been adopted by
some Orthodox churches. It was defined at a church meeting in the 1920s 
(before the changes in
day length were quantifiable). The original version called for 
celebrating Easter and related holy days
based on astronomical calculations of the equinox, but that part was 
ignored, only the leap day
calculations were adopted, together with dropping some days to sync to 
the Gregorian Calendar.
The ostensible advantage is keeping the northward equinox closer to
March 21. I suspect the actual appeal is being able to match the civil 
calendar and the calendar used
by other Christians without adopting a calendar mandated by a Roman 
Catholic pope (that is, until
2800).

Some countries have had the Orthodox church as their state religion at 
the time they abandoned
the Julian Calendar, so it isn't perfectly clear whether they adopted 
the Gregorian Calendar or the
Revised Julian Calendar (especially to foreigners who don't speak the 
respective language and don't
know how to find the relevant law, like me).

Gerry Ashton

On 1/5/2012 12:22 PM, Warner Losh wrote:

> On Jan 5, 2012, at 12:16 AM, Ian Batten wrote:

>> Given there's some ambiguity about leap-year rules out into the far future anyway,

> What's the ambiguity?  As far as I know, the official rules that were promulgated have never changed.  There's many proposal to deal with needing an extra leap day, but none have been ratified (mostly because there's no Pope to say do this or else anymore).

>

> Warner

>

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