Lady Day

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Lady Day

This article concerns the holiday. For the Lou Reed song, see Berlin (album)
Berlin (album)

Berlin is a 1973 album by Lou Reed, his third solo album and the follow-up to Transformer . In 2003, the album was ranked number 344 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time....
. For notable women known as "Lady Day," see Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter.Nicknamed Lady Day by her loyal friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing....
and Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was an United States blues singer.The most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, Smith is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists....
.

In the Christian calendar, Lady Day is the traditional name of the Feast of the Annunciation

Annunciation

In Christianity, the Annunciation is the revelation to Mary, the mother of Jesus, by the angel Gabriel that she would Conception a child to be born the Son of God....
of the Blessed Virgin (25 March) and the first of the four traditional Irish and English quarter days

Quarter days

In Great Britain and Ireland tradition, the quarter days were the four dates in each year on which servants were hired, and rents and rates were due....
. The "Lady" was the Virgin Mary. The term derives from Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and about 1470, when the #Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William...
, when some nouns lost their genitive inflections.

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Encyclopedia

Annunciation

Quarter days

Middle English

Blessed Virgin Mary

The Blessed Virgin Mary, sometimes shortened to The Blessed Virgin or The Virgin Mary, is a traditional title used by most Christians and most specifically used by liturgical Christians such as Roman Catholics, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, and some others to describe Mary, mother of Jesus, the mother of...
day."

Non-religious significance

In England, Lady Day was New Year's Day

New Year's Day

New Year's Day is the first day of the new year. On the modern Gregorian calendar, it is celebrated on January 1, as it was also in ancient Rome ....
up to 1752 when, following the move from the Julian Calendar

Julian calendar

The Julian calendar, a reform of the Roman calendar, was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, and came into force in 45 BC . It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year, known at least since Hipparchus....
to the Gregorian Calendar

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 by the papal bull Inter gravissimas....
, 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, i.e. 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 did not 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

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, Order of Merit was an England author of the naturalism movement, though he regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain....
, e.g., Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper, The Graphic....
and Far From the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared, anonymously, as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership; critical notices, too, were plentiful and mostly positive....
.

The logic of using Lady Day as the start of the year is that it reckons years A.D. from the moment of the Annunciation

Annunciation

In Christianity, the Annunciation is the revelation to Mary, the mother of Jesus, by the angel Gabriel that she would Conception a child to be born the Son of God....
, 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

New Year

The New Year is an event that happens when a culture celebrates the end of one year and the beginning of the next year. Cultures that measure yearly calendars all have New Year celebrations....
.