At 10:00 2001-01-20 -0500, Judith Conrad <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>[...]
>Candlemas, traditionally 40 days after Christmas[....]

By the present-day way of counting, 40 days after Christmas would be
February 3, while Candlemas is clearly February 2.  Similarly, Easter would
be only 39 days after Ash Wednesday and Pentecost only 49 days after Easter.
And the octave of a note is the one seven diatonic notes above it!  In
contrast, the traditional way of counting seems to have started with the
first day (or note).  I find that hard to swallow, because it would make
Christmas the first day after Christmas, and so on.  When and how did the
change take place?

Ed Dunham.