Julius Klatte wrote:
...
> Was good old Christ born in the year 0 or 1? And why wasn't
> he born on january the 1st?
...
> It would be much simpler to start counting the years
> from his birth on jan. 1st.
...

This is an incomplete response, but here goes: Christ wasn't born on January
first because months were around, more or less, before the Christian calendar.
The Romans had a calendar where the years were referred to by the tribunes in
power at the time (kinda like if we were to referr to 1998 as "the sixth year
of Clinton's time in office" or something like that). It's because of the
Romans that we get months with names like September, October, etc., which mean
'seventh month,' 'eighth month,' and so on. ...Yes, September is the ninth
month: when Julius Caesar came along, some 50 years before Christ, (whenever
that was), he noticed that there was some part of the calendar which wasn't
split into months like the rest of the year, so he created the month we know
of as "July", and because he wanted his month to be special, stole a day from
February so that July could have 31 days. After he was killed, the next
emperor, named Octavian, or Augustus Caesar (can you see where this is going?)
took the remaining 30 days and named it "August", and he too stole a day from
February for his month. (Augustus, by the way, is a Latin word for venerable,
majestic, or first -- so that the eighth month means first, and the ninth
month means seventh... oh well.)

-Mark R.

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