Quarter days - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In British and Irish tradition, the quarter days were the four dates in each year on which servants were hired, and rents were due. They fell on four religious festivals roughly three months apart and close to the two solstices and two equinoxes.
The significance of quarter days is now limited, although leasehold payments and rents for business premises in England are often still due on the old English quarter days.
The quarter days have been observed at least since the Middle Ages:
"These have been the days when accounts had to be settled, days when magistrates paid their visits to outlying parts in order to determine outstanding cases and suits. There is a principle of justice enshrined in this institution: debts and unresolved conflicts must not be allowed to linger on. However complex the case, however difficult to settle the debt, a reckoning has to be made and publicly recorded; for it is one of the oldest legal principles of this country that justice delayed is injustice. Among the provisions that the barons wrested from the extortionate and unjust King John in Magna Carta of 1215, a safeguard for gentry like themselves and hungry peasants alike, was the promise that 'To none will we sell, or deny, or delay right or justice'. Days of assize ensure openness, assurance and timeliness of justice, justice not sold, not denied, not delayed."
In England
The English quarter days (also observed in Wales and the Channel Islands) are:
* Lady Day (25 March)
* Midsummer Day (24 June)
* Michaelmas (29 September)
* Christmas (25 December)
Lady Day was also the first day of the year in the British Empire (excluding Scotland) until 1752 (when it was harmonised with the Scottish practice of 1 January being New Year's Day). The British tax year still starts on 'Old' Lady Day (6 April under the Gregorian calendar corresponded to 25 March under the Julian calendar).
The cross-quarter days are four holidays falling in between the quarter days: Candlemas, May Day (1 May), Lammas, and All Hallows (1 November). The Scottish term days, which fulfil a similar role as days on which rents are paid, correspond more nearly to the cross-quarter days than to the English quarter days.
Well, I sometimes think that part of why people dislike the conventional property tax is that it is billed twice a year, and one must write a fairly large lump sum check. Those who escrow their taxes as a condition of their mortgage aren't faced with this. The vast majority of one's income taxes and payroll taxes are withheld biweekly or monthly.Technology has come a long way, and it would probably make sense for our land value taxes to be paid once a month, just as mortgage payments are. Many people would opt for an automatic withdrawal from their checking account, as mortgages and car payments are often handled.Sidelight: my understanding is that Candlemas, which is on the same date that the US celebrates Groundhog Day, is the middle of winter, and one should have remaining half the candles one needs to get through the winter.
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