Lady Day and Tax Day

An excellent article this morning, worth reading.  From Can there be forgiveness after Christianity? by Ed West.

In making his argument, he raises an issue which distracts me.  The connection between Christian tradition and paying taxes in the Spring.

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, which as well as being the most important date in history for Christians, is also one of the most painted scenes in history (the picture illustrating this piece is by Henry Ossawa Tanner)

In England it was also once known as Lady Day, and until the 18th century was the start of the year. On this date tenants up and down the kingdom would travel to the lord’s manor to renew their contracts, and reaffirm what taxes aimed at grinding down the peasant’s will to live had to be paid (that’s why the tax year still starts at this time of year).

I’m a great believer in the idea that we lost something important with the abolition of the medieval calendar, and it’s psychologically very healthy to have a set of feasts and fasts, days for thinking of the dead, days for marking the boundaries of the community, and days for abstaining. (It’s a subject I’d like to turn into a book or piece one day, sort of like ‘How to live like a medieval peasant but without getting the plague’, although I’m not sure ‘coffee morning with the landlord day’ would suit everyone.)

The Feast of Annunciation is the announcement by the Archangel Gabriel that Marry, through immaculate conception, would give birth to God's son, Jesus.  

Over at Wikipedia, the connection between Lady Day and taxes is confirmed.

In England, Lady Day was New Year's Day (i.e. the new year began on 25 March) from 1155 until 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Great Britain and its Empire and with it the first of January as the official start of the year in England, Wales and Ireland.[6] (Scotland changed its new year's day to 1 January in 1600.) A vestige of this remains in the United Kingdom's tax year, which ends on 5 April, or "Old Lady Day", i.e., Lady Day adjusted for the 11 "lost days" of the calendar change in 1752. Until this change Lady Day had been used as the start of the legal year but also the end of the fiscal and tax year. This should be distinguished from the liturgical and historical year.

As a year-end and quarter-day that conveniently did not fall within or between the seasons for ploughing and harvesting, Lady Day was a traditional day on which year-long contracts between landowners and tenant farmers would begin and end in England and nearby lands (although there were regional variations). Farmers' time of "entry" into new farms and onto new fields was often this day.  As a result, farming families who were changing farms would travel from the old farm to the new one on Lady Day. In 1752, the British empire finally followed most of western Europe in switching to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian calendar. The Julian lagged 11 days behind the Gregorian, and hence 25 March in the Old Style calendar became 5 April ("Old Lady Day"), which assumed the role of contractual year-beginning. (The date is significant in some of the works of Thomas Hardy, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, and is discussed in his 1884 essay "The Dorset Farm Labourer").

So Lady Day and Tax Day are connected historically in England.  How about the US?

Of course we did not have income tax until 1913, so Tax Day is much more modern an institution at the national level.  I have scanned several articles and none of them make the connection between Annunciation, Lady Day or Tax Day.  But the closeness in time frame suggests that even if not explicitly, there is some echo of ancient traditions between Tax Day and Lady Day.

By the way, West's article is about forgiveness.  Not taxes and Lady Day.  It is well worth a read.