Books

 When I finished high school, I met people who said I had to read Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

I went to the library, Atlas Shrugged was about 1200 pages, so I asked, 'Why should I read Atlas Shrugged when it is 1200 pages?' All the people I asked said, 'Atlas Shrugged is terrible. Never read it.' So I didn't.

Lord of the Rings was in three volumes, and Volume I wasn't that long, so I tried to read it. Unreadable. I told the person who told me never to read Atlas Shrugged, and she said, 'You have to read The Hobbit first.'

So I read The Hobbit. And then I had to read Lord of the Rings. And it was GREAT. I even read all the appendices and other supplements.

Lord of the Rings starts with a lot of stuff explaining The Hobbit, stuff that is incomprehensible if one has never read The Hobbit. After one has read The Hobbit, it's all stuff one wants to understand. The Guardian film reviewer said he tried to read Lord of the Rings, found it unreadable (as I did before The Hobbit) and found the movie not very good. So the Guardian, once a great newspaper, has fallen.

I found the Lord of the Rings so enthralling, I read the appendix on calendars. A subject on which Tolkien was not very familiar. All his calendars were variations on the Roman calendar, which, before Julius, had 12 months of 30 days each. Not enough for a year, so every December, they'd add a few days. The goal was to have March 21 the Vernal Equinox. But they usually got it wrong. So they tried to correct the next December.

Not a good calendar. But Tolkien liked it, and had all the calendars in Middle Earth based on it.

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Julius made the months 28, 29, 30, or 31 days, with February 28 days in years not divisible by 4, and 29 days in years divisible by 4. Not quite in sync with the solar year, but close. Gregory fixed the small error. And now most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar.

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But Roman solar years are unusual. Most cultures use the moon as the month (and the words tell us that the English did before the Romans came).

But the lunar month is about 29.5 days, so 12 lunar months are not a solar year. 

Since most religions have a planting festival and a harvest festival, the dates for those festivals must be be in spring and fall. But with a 12 lunar month year, that won't happen. Not a big problem. One uses leap months to make sure some date fits a solar marker, a solstice or an equinox. If 12 lunar months aren't enough, one has a leap month.

The Chinese use the Winter Solstice. Their New Year must be after the Solstice, so, if the New Year would be before the Solstice, they have a leap month.

The Hebrews use the Vernal Equinox. So if the full moon in the month of Nisan (Nisan 14) is before the Vernal Equinox, the year has 13 months. If Nisan 14 is after the Vernal Equinox with 12 months, the year has 12 lunar months.

Why didn't Tolkien know the traditional English calendar was lunar???

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And, of course, Mohammed said that planting festivals and harvest festivals are prohibited for Muslims (since Arabs don't have planting or harvesting, their diet is based on goats), so he prohibited the 13th month. Which means the Islamic year moves year after year, Ramadan comes a few weeks earlier year after year. As does Islamic New Year.

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So most calendars are lunar calendars that are somehow tied to the year, except for the Roman calendars and the Islamic calendars.

And Easter is always just after Passover (unless you are Orthodox, when Easter is at least two weeks after Passover), but every year the newspapers are shocked that the two festivals are so close together.