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→The Celtic calendar
by Cormac, O'Donovan, John, ed. and tr; Stokes, Whitley, 1868)</ref><ref name="Olmsted">Olmsted, Garrett (2009). ''The Coligny Calendar: the Implications for Gaulish and Irish Festival Dates''.</ref>
by Cormac, O'Donovan, John, ed. and tr; Stokes, Whitley, 1868)</ref><ref name="Olmsted">Olmsted, Garrett (2009). ''The Coligny Calendar: the Implications for Gaulish and Irish Festival Dates''.</ref>
A Celtic lunisolar calendar has been reconstructed from fragments of two second AD calendars found in the French towns of Coligny and Villards d'Heria. The first month on this calendar is called ''Samonios''. The Celts celebrated a three-day festival that began on the 17th of ''Samonios'', according to the calendar.<ref name="Olmsted"/>
A Celtic lunisolar calendar has been reconstructed from fragments of two second AD calendars found in the French town of Coligny. The first month on this calendar is called ''Samonios''. The Celts celebrated a three-day festival that began on the 17th of ''Samonios'', according to the calendar.<ref name="Olmsted">Olmsted, Garrett (2009). ''The Coligny Calendar: the Implications for Gaulish and Irish Festival Dates''.</ref> This festival may correspond to Beltaine, the most important Celtic holiday. Samhain followed Beltaine by six months. If Samhain was originally the date of the winter solstice, it could have migrated due to calendar drift. Perhaps the change of season dates were placed on the first of the month for convenience.
If Samhain was originally the date of the winter solstice, it could migrated to its current November 1 location due to a combination of calendar drift and round off error. Roman sources record that the Celts used a thirty-year calendar cycle. The Coligny calendar is five years long. A thirty-year cycle can be constructed with six Coligny calendars end-to-end, but with one month of 29 days dropped. That would give the Celtic year an average length of 365.2333 days. The true length of a solar year is 365.2422 days. The calendar would have drifted by one day every 113 years. Placing the start of a season on the first of the month has obvious advantages in terms of convenience.
==References==
==References==