A Year With George Washington
On February 11, 1732 (O.S.) George Washington was born near Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1752, the British switched to the Gregorian calendar, which adjusts for 11 days that had been lost to time, making his birthday Feb 22nd in the adjusted calendar.
The Julian Calendar, instituted by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C. upon the advice of Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, who proposed the more accurate solar reckoning to correct discrepancies in the older calendar and establish a more reliable system for timekeeping across the vast Roman Empire.
The Julian Calendar was in use for over 1,600 years before the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in a papal bull titled Inter Gravissima issued by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582. The Julian Calendar, after over a millennium and a half, had run adrift by ten days due to a small miscalculation of leap year adjustments. Pope Gregory’s calendar largely corrected those errors.
Although the row between the English Monarch, King Henry VIII, and Pope Clement over the “Annulment” of his marriage to the very Catholic Catherine of Aragon had cooled somewhat by the issuance of the Gregorian Calendar, Protestant England did not warm to the Catholic innovation until 170 years later, in 1752. By then, the calendar was inaccurate by eleven days.
Finally, it was decided that Great Britain and her colonies would amend the month of September 1752 to eliminate the dates September 3rd through September 13th.
Benjamin Franklin, in his widely read Poor Richard’s Almanack, wrote of the vanishing eleven days.
“And what an indulgence is here, for those who love their pillow to lie down in Peace on the second of this month and not perhaps awake till the morning of the fourteenth.”
Thus, after 1752, those like George Washington, whose birth and death straddled that year, had their birthdays moved forward 11 days. This is why we celebrate the Father of our Country’s birthday on February 22nd (New Style) rather than February 11th(Old Style).
During his extraordinary life, both those who knew him and those who knew of him fittingly celebrated his birth on both days, such was the respect he had earned.
Perhaps it is also fitting that we should do the same.
