Everything about Lady Day totally explained
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In the
Christian calendar,
Lady Day is the Feast of the
Annunciation (
25 March) and the first of the four traditional Irish and English
quarter days. The "Lady" was the
Virgin Mary. The term derives from
Middle English, when some nouns lost their
genitive inflections. "Lady" would later gain an -s genitive ending, and therefore the name means "
Lady's day."
Non-Religious Significance
In England, Lady Day was
New Year's Day up to
1752 when, following the move from the
Julian Calendar to the
Gregorian Calendar,
1 January became the start of the year. A vestige of this remains in the
United Kingdom's tax year, which starts on
6 April, for example Lady Day adjusted for the
lost days of the calendar change (until this change Lady Day had been used as the start of the legal year).
As a year-end and quarter day that conveniently didn't fall within or between the seasons for plowing and harvesting, Lady Day was a traditional day on which year-long contracts between landowners and tenant farmers would begin and end in England and nearby lands (although there were regional variations). Farmers' time of "entry" into new farms and onto new fields was often this day. As a result, farming families who were changing farms would travel from the old farm to the new one on Lady Day. After the calendar change, "Old Lady Day" (April 6), the former date of the Annunciation, largely assumed this role. The date is significant in some of the works of
Thomas Hardy,
for example,
Tess of the D'Urbervilles and
Far From the Madding Crowd.
The logic of using Lady Day as the start of the year is that it reckons years
A.D. from the moment of the
Incarnation, which is considered to take place at the moment of the conception of Jesus at the Annunciation rather than at the moment of his birth at Christmas. See also
New Year.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Lady Day'.
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