Reply #2: Not past Old Christmas. [View All]

[jobycom]

http://www.christmas-time.com/cp-old.html
"..the Julian calendar overestimated the length of the year by eleven minutes fifteen seconds, which comes to one day every on hundred and twenty-eight years. By the sixteenth century the calendar was ten days out. In 1582 reforms instituted by Pope Gregory XIII lopped the eleven minutes fifteen seconds off the length of a year and deleted the spare ten days.

By the time England came round to adopting the Gregorian calendar, in the middle of the eighteenth century, England was eleven days ahead of the Continent.

snip (Ignore the myth about the calendar riots--that was a myth).

Before the calendar was reformed, England celebrated Christmas on the equivalent of the 6th of January by our modern, Gregorian reckoning. That is why in some parts of Great Britain people still call the 6th of January, Old Christmas Day."
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http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/dec2004/dec2004.html

And a different story:
http://www.telliquah.com/OldXmas.htm