When do you start the year
0 voters
This contraversy recently came up in my game, and though it is solved and no big deal, I am wondering what everyone else does. I always kept track of calander years, which always start in January, so my start date is always Winter 1220 (followed by Spring 1220. Others insist the year begins in Spring, and count winter as the end of the year.
I usually start the Hermetic year the day after the Winter Solstice. In our last covenant, the magi, grogs, and covenfolk celebrated Saturnalia at the year's end.
Spring Equinox for the Hermetic Year.
Spring Equinox for the Hermetic Year.
That works well for the old AA year (which the line doesn't reference any longer). But what about the AD Calander year?
We start the year (Hermetic and non-Hermetic) in the Spring season.
medievalgenealogy.org.uk/guide/chron.shtml
Matt Ryan
See, this is confusing. When I look through history, the AD calander alwats starts in January. Hermetic year is fine, but why in the world would you start the calendar year in spring? All historic clalendars I have ever seen universally start the year in January. In fact, I would go so far as to say you can start the game in spring and count off years of the saga sarting with spring, but 1220 still began three moths before the start of the game. Go ask the pope.
I am just really mind-boggled here. All these years playing Ars, and I never realized that this is what everyone else was doing. The poll obviously indicates I am the odd man here.
Doesn't matter. A million people can tell me the sky is green, but it is still blue. I will continue on using the normal calendar.
But seriously, I am confused. This makes no sense. Does your calendar go from 1220 to 1221 in April?
Trying to wrap my mind around Matt's link. It seems that the English didn't mark years proper at all. Is this true throughout Europe? I am not interested in what peasents did. How did the pope and bishops and educated men record the year? In Italy? In Greece? In France? Not kings, not nobbles. Educated people. Clergy. How did clergy mark years?
And sorry if I sound like a spaz. I am just honestly confused.
Because winter starts around november-to-december. So when january rolls around, winter's already started! Thus, the next logical season to hop to is spring around late feburary-mid march, depending on where you live.
In my two previous Sagas, we had a bit of a pickle, since there came some discrepancy. We use the hermetic calendar, cyclic and bason on the 4 seasons, which respectively starts at their relevant solstice/equinox. But what year to use? Back in those days, we did all book keeping at winter solstice, aging, Aegis, plus the year changed. But changing it as soon as winter solstice was a bit early, while pushing it away to vernal equinox seemed a bit silly, since we'd have almost 3 months, where we used a different year than the rest of the world.
Lately, I decided, that the logical thing was to do all book keeping at the end of winter, before spring started, and also change the year here. We'd just have to remember which year in Mundane Reckoning it was. It seems logical from a cyclic view, that spring is the first season and winter the last. It works for us. The reasoning is, the year attatched to a specific season (e.g. winter 1220) comes from the start of the season. Since the winter season of 1220 starts in 1220 by normal reckoning, so shall it be. We don't suddenly change year in the middel of a season. I don't know about You others, but we're too busy with important and fancy magical stuff, to do such unimportant notary work.