The difference between lunar calendar and Gregorian calendar

 

The difference between lunar calendar and Gregorian calendar

 

The name "year" began in the Zhou Dynasty of China. By the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, due to his increasingly rich experience in "observing time and timing", Sima Qian created the "Taichu Calendar", which determined that the first month of the first month was the beginning of the year, and the first day of the first lunar month was the beginning of the year. new year. Since then, the custom of the Lunar New Year has been passed down. The lunar calendar is one of the traditional Chinese calendars, also known as the "lunar calendar", "Yin calendar", "ancient calendar", "Huang calendar", "Xia calendar" and "Old calendar".

The Gregorian calendar is the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar commonly used by most countries in the world and was revised from the "Julian calendar". The Julian calendar was the calendar that the ancient Roman commander Julius Caesar decided to adopt in 46 BC.

The Gregorian calendar is a calendar based on the movement of the earth around the sun.

 

Perpetual Calendar Legend

 

The Spring Festival falls on the first day of the first lunar month. We all know that calendars are divided into lunar calendar and Gregorian calendar. In fact, the perpetual calendar is widely spread among Chinese folk customs. What's going on with the perpetual calendar?

According to legend, in ancient times, a young man named Wannian saw that the seasons were very chaotic at that time, so he decided to fix them. But he couldn't find a way to calculate time. One day, when he was tired from going up the mountain to chop firewood, he sat under the shade of a tree to rest. The movement of the tree shadows inspired him. He designed a dial to measure the sun's shadow and measure the time of the day. Later, the dripping spring on the cliff inspired him, and he made a five-layer clepsydra to calculate time. As time went by, he discovered that every three hundred and sixty days, the four seasons cycled around again, and the length of the days repeated themselves.

The king at that time was named Zu Yi, and he was often troubled by the unpredictable weather conditions. After Wan Nian found out, he took the sundial and the clepsydra to see the emperor and explained to Zu Yi the principles of the movement of the sun and the moon. After Zu Yi heard this, Long Yan was overjoyed and felt that it made sense. So he left ten thousand years to build the Sun and Moon Pavilion in front of the Temple of Heaven, and built the sundial platform and leaky pot pavilion. He also hopes to accurately measure the laws of the sun and the moon, calculate the accurate morning and evening times, and create a calendar to benefit the people of the world.

Once, Zu Yi went to learn about the progress of the Ten Thousand Years Test Calendar. When he climbed up to the Temple of the Sun and Moon, he saw a poem carved on the stone wall beside the Temple of Heaven:

The sun rises and sets three hundred and six times, and the cycle begins all over again.

There are four seasons of vegetation and trees, and there are twelve circles in one year.

Zu Yi knew that Wannian's creation of the calendar had been completed, so he personally went to the Sun and Moon Pavilion to visit Wannian. Wan Nian pointed to the sky and said to Zu Yi: "Now is the end of the twelve months. The old year is over and the new year has begun. Please pray to the king to set a festival."

Zu Yi said: "Spring is the beginning of the year, so let's call it the Spring Festival." It is said that this is the origin of the Spring Festival.

Winter passed and spring came, year after year, ten thousand years after long-term observation and careful calculation, he formulated an accurate solar calendar. When he presented the solar calendar to his successor, his face was covered with silver whiskers. The monarch was deeply moved. In order to commemorate Wannian's achievements, he named the solar calendar "Wannian Calendar" and named Wannian the sun, moon and longevity star. Later, people hung pictures of longevity stars during the Chinese New Year, which is said to commemorate the ten thousand years of great virtue and respect.

 

The origin of the lunar and solar calendars

 

The Spring Festival falls on the first day of the first lunar month. The lunar calendar is also called the lunar calendar. But farmers cannot farm according to the lunar calendar, because the days in the old calendar are not fixed. If the planting days are wrong for dozens of days, the harvest will be greatly affected. In order to solve this problem, ancient Chinese astronomers came up with a good way to divide the earth's orbit into 24 parts. That is the 24 solar terms in our country. Farmers use these twenty-four solar terms for farming.

The lunar calendar is one of the traditional Chinese calendars, also known as the "lunar calendar", "Yin calendar", "ancient calendar", "Huang calendar", "Xia calendar" and "Old calendar". The lunar calendar is a lunisolar calendar. On the one hand, the moon orbits the earth once as a "month", and the average month length is equal to the "syzygous moon". This is the same principle as the lunar calendar, so it is also called a "lunar calendar"; on the other hand, a "leap month" is set to make The average length of each year is as close as possible to the tropical year, and twenty-four solar terms are set to reflect the changing characteristics of the seasons. Therefore, the lunar calendar combines the characteristics of the yin and yang calendars, and is also called the "lunar and solar calendar". To this day, almost all Chinese people in the world, as well as countries such as the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam, still use the lunar calendar to calculate traditional festivals such as the Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and other festivals.

Gregorian calendar, also known as solar calendar. One kind of calendar is based on the period of the earth orbiting the sun. Its average calendar year is a tropical year. There are two types of calendars, one is an ordinary year and the other is a leap year. The leap year is only one day different from the ordinary year. The commonly referred to as the Gregorian calendar is the internationally accepted Gregorian calendar (ie the "Gregorian calendar").

Since there are 365.2422 days in a year, not exactly 365 days, there is a leap year every four years, that is, there is an extra 29th day in February. After a leap of four years, it has been corrected to 365.25.

But there is still an error, so one leap year will be subtracted every hundred years, that is, 1700, 1800, 1900, etc. There is no leap year, and then it is corrected to 365.24. Finally, one leap year will be added back every four hundred years, that is, 1600, 2000, There are leap years in years such as 2400, and the final correction to 365.2425 still has an error of 0.0003. It takes about 3000 years for a one-day error to appear, so it is already very accurate.

 

When will the Spring Festival be designated as a national statutory holiday?

 

When was the Spring Festival officially designated as a statutory holiday in China?

In ancient times, the Spring Festival was "New Year's Day". "Yuan" means the beginning, "Dan" means morning, and "New Year's Day" means the first morning of the year. The ancient name of the Spring Festival was also called "Zhengdan", "Suishou", "Three Yuan", etc. Du Taiqing of the Sui Dynasty said in the "Five Candles Collection": "The first month is the Dragon Moon, and its first day is the Yuan Day, which is also the Zhengchao and Yuan Shuo." The original meaning of "Yuan" is "head", which was later extended to " "Start", because this day is the first day of the year, the first day of spring, the first day of the first month, so it is called "Sanyuan"; because this day is also the dynasty of the year, the dynasty of the month, and the dynasty of the sun, it is also called "Sanyuan". "Three Dynasties"; and because it is the first Shuo day, it is also called "Yuan Shuo".

"Erya", the annotation of "year" is: "Xia means Sui, Shang means Si, Zhou means Nian." Since the Yin and Shang Dynasties, the full and missing moon has been regarded as one month, the first day of the lunar month is called Shuo, and the fifteenth day is called Wang. . The beginning of each year is counted from the day and night of the first lunar month, which is called "New Year's Day" or "Yuan's Day".

The name of the year began in the Zhou Dynasty. By the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Sima Qian created the "Taichu Calendar" due to his increasing experience in "observing images and telling time", which determined that the first month of the first month was the beginning of the year and the first day of the first lunar month was the new year. Since then, the custom of the Lunar New Year has been passed down.

On December 31, 1911, the Hubei military government of the Republic of China issued the "Encyclical of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the Switch to the Gregorian Calendar in the Republic of China", clearly referring to the New Year's Day as the "Spring Festival". In order to adapt to the farming season and facilitate statistics, the Nanjing Provisional Government stipulated the use of the lunar calendar among the people and the Gregorian calendar in government agencies, factories, mines, schools and groups. The first day of the first month of the Gregorian calendar is New Year's Day, and the first day of the first lunar month is called the Spring Festival.

The Gregorian calendar is the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar commonly used by most countries in the world and was revised from the "Julian calendar". The Julian calendar was the calendar that the ancient Roman commander Julius Caesar decided to adopt in 46 BC.

The Gregorian calendar is a calendar based on the movement of the earth around the sun. It takes the earth's orbit around the sun (a tropical year) as one year. The length of a tropical year is 365.2422 days, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. Accumulated in 4 years, there are a total of 23 hours, 15 minutes and 4 seconds, which is approximately equal to one day. Therefore, one day is added every four years and is added to the end of February. If there are 366 days, it is a leap year. However, 4 years plus 1 day actually adds 44 minutes and 56 seconds to the return year. When the total is about 128 years, one day is added, which is about 3 extra days in 400 years.

On September 27, 1949, at the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, it was adopted that the world's common Gregorian calendar era should be used, and the first day of the first month of the Gregorian calendar is designated as New Year's Day, commonly known as the Gregorian calendar year; the first day of the first lunar month is usually They are all around the beginning of spring, so the first month of the lunar calendar is definitely the "Spring Festival", commonly known as the lunar year.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the name "Spring Festival" was officially included in the Chinese Festival Code. Basically, the Lunar New Year is designated as a public holiday in countries and regions with a sizeable Chinese population.