New Years Eve Fireworks

Another year has past and again the sky is ablaze with the fiery voices of the people, celebrating another flip of fortunes, hoping for the best in the coming calendar. Perhaps this time the trains will be on schedule, the traffic will be easy and flowing, the neighbors will restrict their loud music to headphones, and the strangers that walk past you on the street will smile more often. This is going to be a good year. In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, the last day of the year, is on December 31. This calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed in 1582. The reformed calendar was adopted later that year by a handful of countries, with other countries adopting it over the following centuries. The motivation for the Gregorian reform was that the Julian calendar assumes that the time between vernal equinoxes is 365.25 days, when in fact it is presently almost exactly 11 minutes shorter. The error between these values accumulated at the rate of about three days every four centuries, resulting in the equinox being on March 11 (an accumulated error of about 10 days) and moving steadily earlier in the Julian calendar at the time of the Gregorian reform. Because the spring equinox was tied to the celebration of Easter, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady movement in the date of the equinox undesirable.