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By: Perrin Novak
MILLBROOK, Ala.- “30 days has September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31, except February alone, which has 28 days clear and 29 days in each Leap Year.” Easily accepted by children, but given any considerable amount of thought, this makes no sense considering every other unit of time has one value.
Let's face it, our calendar has problems, lots of problems.
Beginning with months, it is apparent that something is up. Upon closer inspection, you might realize that months are not defined with the same number of days, rather they change each month.
Another problem with months is that they aren’t aligned with anything: lunar phases, solstices, equinoxes, business quarters, financials, etc.…
Instead they result in a frequent waste of money, having to be reprinted every year in order for us to keep up with them.
Which brings up yet another problem with our calendar. It isn’t perennial.
A perennial calendar is one that would begin the year always starting as Monday on Jan. 1. It would mean that the only change each year would be the number of the year. Everything else would remain constant.
This could lead to Oct. 13 always being a Friday, or your birthday always landing on a Saturday.
Having a perennial calendar would also help with important dates for businesses, governments and tax-payers.
As it stands, the four quarters of the year are divided into 92, 91, 91, and 90 days respectively. This means that when something “quarterly” is calculated, accountants have to determine how those extra days affect interest, bonds, debt and inflation.
The unequal quarters also make it hard to determine specific dates of the year.
If I were to ask you what day of the week was June 10, 2023, unless something important happened that day, you would have no idea. The idea of this is silly considering you have been alive for a lifetime of June 10’s.
On a perennial calendar, with every day being the same, determining the day of the week would no longer require dedication to doomsdays. Instead, you would just figure out how far past the 1st of the month it was since it would always be a Monday.
The last issue of the current calendar has to do with the years. With the Gregorian, there is no defined “year 0”. Rather there is one B.C. and one A.D. with no middle.
These specifications are also purely religious and do not apply to the rest of the world. While this isn’t an issue for some, having a universal system would allow for much easier collaborations between countries.
Several solutions to these problems have been published, but remain relatively undiscovered since there aren’t enough people to make them relevant.
Photo from: Forbes
A promising example is the “Hank-Henry Permanent Calendar” which seeks to turn the year into four equal quarters.
The first two months in a quarter have 30 days, with the third having 31 days. Then every four years an extra week is added in order to compensate for the differences in time between years.
Looking backwards in time, calendars change very seldom. The only ones recorded were shifts in power during the reign of Julius Caesar, and by Pope Gregory XIII.
Especially having undergone a technological revolution since Pope Gregory’s time, I’d argue it’s high time for a new calendar.
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