Lady Day 25th March

• Feast of the Annunciation Day
  
• Origins of Lady Day
• Lady Day 6th April – Tax
  Year Starts in UK
• Ladies Day
• Mother’s Day

Feast of The Annunciation Day

Not many special days have female associations, Lady is special because in the Christian religion, it was the day when Jesus was conceived.
The Christmas nativity will be 9 months later.

To continue this theme, Lady day is also the feast of the Annunciation.  In this
context, the word annunciation means announce.  When the angel Gabriel
pronounced the conception, or incarnation, of Jesus in the Virgin Mary.

Lady
Day on 25th March is one of the four Quarter days, the others are: Christmas on
25th December, Midsummer’s Day on 24th June and
Michaelmas on 29th September.

In England, Lady Day was New Year’s Day up to 1752.  Indeed it is in England that Lady Day still has the greatest
significance.  Until 1971, Quarter Sessions or Quarter Assizes had a connotation with Quarter days.  Nowadays Quarter Sessions have been replaced with Crown Courts.  Quarter days were also the
traditional day when tenants paid their quarterly rent.  Indeed standard leases still have the clause:  ‘Rent on a lease is payable on the ‘usual quarter days’ unless the lease states to the contrary.

Multiple Origins of Lady Day

Once cannot help noticing the proximity of these quarter days to significant solar events.  The winter solstice, the spring equinox (Lady Day), the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox.
However, the relationship is not precise because the quarter days are on fixed date 4 or 5 days after the more precise solar event.  It’s as though our ancient ancestors waited a few days to be sure, and
then celebrated the solstice or equinox with a quarter day.

Lady Day is another example of the church appending a religious celebration
to a pagan festival, the relationship between Halloween and All Saints would be
another case in point.

In myths described in the Mabinogion Welsh folk tales, Lady Day celebrates
the union between the spring Virgin Goddess and the young solar God.  In
another Mabinogion tale, the spring equinox (Lady Day) is when Llew takes
revenge on the evil Goronwy.  According to the allegory, Llew lances his
bitter enemy with a shaft of sunlight.

To return to the Holy Bible, and the Gospel according to St Luke:

Luke 1:26
And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God
into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose
name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.

Lady Day 6th April – Tax
Year Starts in the UK

The original Julian calendar, which dated from Roman times, did not take
into account the fact that there are 365.24 days in a year.  By the
16th century this discrepancy resulted in the seasons, solstice and other
events being out by approximately 11 days.

Pope Gregory XIII introduced a more accurate calendar by introducing leap
years.  For hundreds of years the tax year in England and Wales started
on Lady Day 25th March, when the Gregorian calendar was finally adopted 11
days were added to the calendar.  To ease the outcry of these ‘lost
days’, the exchequer delayed the start of the tax year in 1753 to 6th April.

From that time until this, the term ‘Lady Day’ is occasionally applied to
the 6th of April rather than the Annunciation Day – 25th March.

Ladies Day

The other connotation, or corruption of Lady Day is Ladies Day.  This
seems to be a feature of every major horse race meeting from Ascot to York.
Lady day bears as much resemblance to these ladies days as lady does to ‘ladette’
– nuff said.

Summary of Lady Day

In view of all that it has going for it, Will and Guy are surprised that Lady
Day is so little known, and hardly ever celebrated.  To recap, Lady Day is one
of only 4 quarter days during the year, it falls near to the vernal equinox, and
crucially, it commemorates
Christ’s conception.

Other ‘Lady’ Days

St
Catherine’s
Day 25th November

This is a day with several meanings: arrival of winter in Estonia, the
martyrdom of St Catherine by the Romans and Catherinettes Day in France.

International Women’s Day 8th March

The very first International Women’s Day was launched in Germany, by
Clara Zetkin, on 19th March 1911 [not 8th March].  The date was chosen
because on 19th March in the 1848 revolution, the Prussian king
recognized, the strength of the armed people and gave
way before the threat of a proletarian uprising.  Among the many promises he
made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for
women.

See Also Mothering Sunday