When Does The Day Begin?

Posted by Byron Pendason on November 25, 2025 CE, in Heathenry, Anglo-saxon calendar, Reconstruction

Wes Hal!1

Not too long ago, I received some criticism about my reconstructed calendar, saying that it seems to start the day at midnight. Part of this confusion is my own fault, I suppose, because I wasn’t clear in when the day began for my reconstructions. We’ll go through the why in a moment, but to clarify up front: When my calendar says that a holiday or first of the month is on a certain date, that day begins the evening before. This is known as Floentine Reckoning.

This critic claimed that my calendar had Yule before the months of Yule began, and from this surmised that my calendar started the day at midnight. The first claim is false, and so the conclusion based on it is also false.

Yule this year is the 21st of December. The solstice (which marks the first day of Yule according to historical reckoning) is at 3 pm UTC on 2025-12-21. The first of the two Yule months (Ærra Geola) also begins on that day. The only way for the claim to be true is if one understood the month beginning the evening of the 21st. Going by Anglo-Saxon reckoning, however, the month actually begins the evening preceding the sunrise of that day. So that starts the month at sunset on the 20th of December by our modern contemporary reckoning. This is 18+ hours before the moment of the solstice.

With that out of the way, let’s answer the question the title of this blog post poses: When does the day begin?

Let’s start with Tacitus, who wrote a book on the Germanic peoples in the first century CE. In it, he says:

“They assemble, except in the case of a sudden emergency, on certain fixed days, either at new or at full moon; for this they consider the most auspicious season for the transaction of business. Instead of reckoning by days as we do, they reckon by nights, and in this manner fix both their ordinary and their legal appointments. Night they regard as bringing on day.” (Tacticus Germania 11, emphasis mine)

This was written several centuries before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain, though. How do we know that the Anglo-Saxons still practiced this way of reckoning by the time period we reconstruct from (roughly from the fifth century CE to the mid seventh century)?

As far as I am aware, our primary source on the Anglo-Saxon calendar (Bede, On The Reckoning of Time ) doesn’t define when the day begins. However, the Florentine Reckoning seems to be encoded in the Anglo-Saxons language, Old English. They counted their days by nights, which can be seen in phrases such as feowertiene niht, which survives into modern English as fortnight. It literally means fourteen nights, but indicated a two week period of time.

For further evidence, consider the following words for each night of the week:

(Each of these terms can also be written without a hyphen or space between the two components, for example Sunnanniht.)

Another point to consider is that it seems it was nearly universal for lunisolar calendars to begin the day the evening before, especially those cultures in Europe. The most well known example of Florentine Reckoning is the Hebrew calendar, which begins their Sabbaths and holy days the evening before.2 But Germanic calendars are widely recognized as beginning their days with the night (as seen in the earlier quoted Germania). The Celtic calendars also began their day in the evening, as did the Ancient Greeks. Medieval Europe also followed this convention, and many Christian liturgical calendars still follow it3. Considering how widespread Florentine Reckoning was in ancient Europe4, added together with the other points discussed here, I think it’s very unlikely that they didn’t start the day at sunset.

The critic mentioned at the beginning of this post wouldn’t argue this point. His criticism was that he thought I was starting my days at midnight, and knew they should start in the evening. This post is mainly to assure any critics that I do indeed start the day the evening before, and to give the reasons why.

I hope that clears up any confusion. Beo gesund!1

  1. Wes hāl and Beo gesund are Old English greetings and farewells that literally mean Be well/whole/healthy. The first seemed to be more common among the Anglian dialects and the second more common among the Saxon dialects. I prefer to use both though, the first as a greeting and the second as a farewell. ↩ ↩2

  2. I spent the final years of my childhood observing the Hebrew calendar, as my family joined the Messianic movement. As such, Florentine Reckoning is second nature to me, so the thought that this point would need clarified never even crossed my mind. ↩

  3. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, counts attending Saturday evening mass as fulfilling the weekly obligation of attending Sunday mass. ↩

  4. The only exception in Europe I could find was the ancient Romans, who started their days at either midnight or sunrise (accounts varied by the source I consulted to check this). But it’s also worth pointing out that the ancient Romans had abandoned their lunisolar calendar for a purely solar one. ↩