Happy new year to all my readers and yoga students!
Most of the world follows the Gregorian calendar, which is a solar calendar with 12 months, 365 days and a day being added to February in the leap years.
The Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar in 1582.
The Julian calendar’s leap year formula was flawed and added too many leap year days. However, the Gregorian calendar fix was not perfect and didn’t follow real astronomy.
The Gregorian calendar assumed time is simple.
The Earth however moves in an elliptical orbit, not a perfect circle and that means that Seasons aren’t all the same length. Spring is 92.8 days, Summer is 93.6 days, Autumn is 89.8 days and Winter is 88.9 days.
The Gregorian calendar forces months into artificial lengths, and the leap year fix means that the calendar drifts by one day every 3226 years.
The most accurate calendar is called the Jalali calendar, introduced in 1079 by Persian mathematician Omar Al Khayyam.
Jalali follows lunar cycles and the New Year starts exactly on the Spring equinox (for us Autumn), March 20 or 21.
That means seasons never shift and seasonal drift never exceeded one day and a leap year correction was needed only every 2.5 million years.
So happy new year everyone.
Be it a new year just celebrated or if you are still hanging out for the Spring Equinox new year celebration!
Let’s hope 2026 is filled with good health, lots of yoga, love, laughter and peace.
