[LEAPSECS] alternative to smearing

[Zefram]

Preben Norager wrote:
>          The other aspect was the dropping of ten days. I don't know
>exactly why the march equinox shall occur allways around march 21. Would
>allways around march 11 not have been just as good?

There was a sense of there being a "correct" phase alignment between the
calendar and the seasons, which had been in place in the past and which
they wanted to restore.  At the time of the introduction of the Julian
calendar, the northward equinox had occurred around March 24 each year.
By the late 16th century the calendar had slipped by 13 days, so obviously
13 days needed to be skipped to restore the originally intended alignment.

But that's not what they did.  For the purposes of the Gregorian reform,
the correct alignment was deemed not to be that which had held at the
inception of the Julian calendar (46 BC), but that which had held at the
Council of Nicaea (AD 325), a founding event for organised Christianity.
The calendar had already slipped three days by the time of the Council,
so in 1582 only ten days needed to be skipped to restore the Council-era
alignment.  That is what was done.

Thus the Gregorian calendar has baked in a three-day misalignment,
which we still live with today.  This is why the traditional date for
Christmas does not properly coincide with the southern solstice, as it
originally had.  Draw your own parallels with modern standards processes.

-zefram