title: Set the year that is assumed when parsing partial date values in .NET
body: <p>I need to parse a date string which could be in any reasonable format. For example:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><code>2012-12-25</code></li>
  <li><code>25 december 2012</code></li>
  <li><code>25 dec</code></li>
  <li><code>17:35</code></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Some of these strings contain ambiguous dates which can result in several possible <code>DateTime</code> values (E.g. <code>25 dec</code> can be interpreted as <code>2012-12-25</code>, <code>2011-12-25</code>, <code>1066-12-25</code>, etc).</p>
  
  <p>The way <code>DateTime.Parse</code> currently handles these ambiguous values is by using the current system date to determine the context. So if the current date is <strong>26th July 2012</strong> the string <code>25 dec</code> is assumed to be in the current year and is parsed as <code>2012-12-25</code></p>
  
  <p>Is it somehow possible to change this behaviour and set the current date context myself? </p>