You're right, the new moon is key. In fact, the Feb 14th date of the new year is the RESULT of this resynchronization! :D
The Chinese Calendar is not strictly a lunar calendar.
If the Chinese Calendar was a strictly lunar calendar, then it would follow similar rules to the islamic calendar, which IS a lunar calendar only. Have you ever looked at the Islamic calendar?
A lunar year of 12 months is made up of roughly 354 lunar days, which is 11 days shorter than a solar year.* This means that every new year starts 11 days earlier than the one before.
Ok, so let's use the lunar calendar to calculate the new year. If we use the coming new moon (Feb 14) as the beginning of the new year, then about 354 days later we will have our next new year, which would start around Feb 3rd. 354 days after that comes our next new year, which would be around Jan 23rd. The year after that it would be Jan 12, then Jan 1, then Dec 20, Dec 9, and so on.
This means that the lunar new year is not tied to the solar year; it would arrive earlier and earlier in the year, making the new year regress through the seasons, taking roughly 19 years to return to the original season.
If a culture wanted to use the moon to keep track of the year, but wanted to start the year according to the seasons, which are solarly governed, then they could tie the two together and start the lunar new year by picking the new moon which was closest to the solar beginning of a season (solar beginning of spring, for instance.) In doing so, they would have to grasp the changes in the lunar count (whether the lunar year was shorter or longer than the solar year, whether there were 3 moons or 4 in a growing season) which is where the qualitative associations of Elements and Animals come in.
Therefore the Chinese Calendar is a combined lunar - solar, or luni-solar calendar.
*If 13 lunar months are being used to make up a lunar year, then the year is 382 days long - 17 days longer than a solar year, which means that every new year starts 17 days later than the one before. The new year therefore progresses through the seasons.
You lucky lucky man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott R. Brown