Another calendar!

6 September 2007
Why Ethiopia's Millennium
is seven years late
By Elizabeth Blunt
BBC News, Addis Ababa

Calendars


People in Ethiopia are preparing to celebrate the New Year on 12 September
and for them, it will be very special - the start of the year 2000
and the beginning of a new millennium.

But the reason why they are celebrating more than seven years after the rest
of the world are rooted in Ethiopian history and in the beliefs of its own Christian
Orthodox Church.

Educated Ethiopians live comfortably in two calendars.

It is still 1999 here and the month is Nahase when they speak Amharic -
September 2007 when they speak English.

The only thing that ever seems to phase them is the complication caused by
the leap years in the two calendars being out of synch.

But even if they are quite at home with the Western calendar,
Ethiopians show no sign of wanting to abandon their own.

Thirteen months

It is part of their national identity, not to mention allowing their tourist industry
to boast that they can offer visitors 13 months of sunshine.


Ethiopian children wave the flag in Addis Ababa at a series of events in the
run-up to the millennium celebration in September - 5/6/2007
Several major events are planned to celebrate the millennium

The short 13th month is just one of the telltale signs that Ethiopians took
their calendar from ancient Egypt.

Another is the date of New Year, originally linked to the annual flood which
brought new life to the Nile Valley.

But none of this explains why the millennium is seven years late;
why Ethiopians think that it is 2000 and not 2007 years since the birth of Christ.

Conservative culture

Ahmed Zakaria, professor of history at Addis Ababa University says the reason
is that the Roman Church amended their calculation in 500 AD - adjusting it by
seven or eight years.


Abuna Paulos I,
The Patriarch says Ethiopia became isolated from Europe

"So we are seven or eight years later than the Roman calculation, so that's
the difference that came in."

The recalculation of the birth of Christ was just the first of a number of changes
in the rest of the world which the Ethiopian church ignored.

It is partly because the country was so remote and isolated, but also, says
the current patriarch, Abuna Paulos I, because Ethiopian Christians are intensely
conservative.

"People are not inclined for any reformations, especially when it comes to religion.

"They are very much loyal - to change one sentence is a betrayal as far as
they are concerned.

"So because of this, they have been isolated. They have been loyal to their
faith and they have maintained their own traditions."

And so here in Ethiopia it is still 1999, we're all seven years younger,
and on the 12 September, the first of Meskeram, we'll finally join
the rest of the world in the 21st century.