Turning Back Time: The Lost Days of Christmas

It's Christmas Podcast Day and we are talking about lost time! Since we just turned back the clocks, it's a perfect time to talk about the time we have lost.

So pull up a chair, because I have to tell you about the time eleven days just… vanished.

In September 1752, people in Britain and the American colonies went to bed on Wednesday the 2nd and woke up on Thursday the 14th. Not because of a wild night out, but by Act of Parliament. And when Christmas rolled around that winter, a whole lot of people looked at the new calendar and said, “Absolutely not.”

In this episode, I dig into how Julius Caesar’s calendar slowly broke, and how Sweden ended up with the one and only February 30th in history (and yes, someone got married on it). I’ll also bust the famous “Give us our eleven days!” riots, which, spoiler, probably never happened. Then we head out into the cold with crowds carrying lanterns to a thorn tree, waiting to see which Christmas it would bloom on. Along the way you’ll meet cows that supposedly kneel at midnight on Old Christmas Eve, and a bull named Old Buck who still crashes a party on the Outer Banks every January.

So is Christmas on the right day? Grab some cocoa and let’s find out.

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Special thanks to:

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