For centuries, dates followed by OS ("Old Style")
were according to the Julian calendar and dates followed by NS ("New
Style") according to the Gregorian one. Sweden adopted the Gregorian
Calendar in 1753, Japan in 1873, Egypt in 1875, Eastern Europe between
1912 to 1919 and Turkey in 1927. In Russia it was decreed by the
(bourgeois) revolutionaries that thirteen days would be omitted from
the calendar, the day following January 31, 1918 becoming February 14,
1918.
It was Pope Pius X who, in 1910, changed the beginning of the
ecclesiastical year from Christmas Day to January 1, effective from
1911 onwards.
All that time, the Christian Orthodox continued to observe the Julian
calendar. In 1923, a Conference of Orthodox Churches in Constantinople
reduced the number of leap years every 900 years and attained a
discrepancy between the calendar and the natural solar year of merely
2.2 seconds per year.
According to this calendar, the Spring Equinox will regress by one day
every 40,000 years.
They, too, had to drop 13 days to bring the Spring Equinox back to
March 21st. Hence the gap between December 25 (Gregorian calendar) and
January 7 (revised Julian-Orthodox calendar).
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