New Year's Day
Since the main purpose of Burmese calendar is to keep pace with the solar year, the new year is always marked by the solar year, which falls at the time when the Sun enters Aries. The date, which at the present falls on the 16th or 17 April, has slowly drifted over the centuries. In the 20th century, the new year's day fell on April 15 or 16th but in the 17th century, it fell on April 9 or 10th.
As a result, the new year's day of Burmese calendar does not have to fall on the first day of the first month of Tagu; in fact, it almost never does fall on the first waxing of Tagu. Tagu is almost always divided into two parts Hnaung Tagu (နှောင်းတန်ခူး, ; "Late Tagu"), before the new year's day and Oo Tagu (ဦးတန်ခူး, ; "Early Tagu") on and after the new year's day. In some years, the year was so behind the solar year that the new year falls in Kason and both Hnaung Tagu and Hnaung Kason (နှောင်းကဆုန်, ; "Late Kason") exist. Therefore, just saying "Tagu of 1373 ME" is not complete as "Oo Tagu of 1373" corresponds to 2011 CE while "Hnaung Tagu of 1373" corresponds to 2012 CE.
Read more about this topic: Traditional Burmese Calendar, Structure, Year
Famous quotes containing the words year and/or day:
“A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)