However, since the year is based on the progression of the seasons, one would expect the beginning of the year to be somehow connected to this fact. The ideal would have been the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, from which moment the day would become progressively longer to reach a peak in midsummer and then start to shorten and die down to a minimum at the end of the year. It would have been ideal, but it's not worth the considerable trouble of deleting 10 days off our present calendar just to have our years beginning at the winter solstice.
Why a twelve-month year? I suppose because arithmetically the number 12 is more convenient than 13, which is almost the exact number of moon (month) cycles in one year. So it was decided some time in the distant past that the number of months would be in synch with the seasons - three months per season (it would have been impossible with 13 months) - by distributing the days making up the 13th month between the remaining twelve, hence the present 30/31/28/29-day long mix.
So, now that they have been divorced from the moon cycle, the months are not related to anything at all. In fact, if we were not so much used to receiving a wage at monthly intervals, and if we were not so much attached to certain dates - our own birthdays, April fools' day, 25 December and so on - we would really not need to have any months at all. To stay in theme with the seasonal cycle, which is in actual reality what the year is all about, we might as well have just four "months", or rather seasons, and name them winter, spring, summer and autumn. The dates would be the following:
Winter 1, Winter 2, ... Winter 91, Spring 1, Spring 2, ..., ..., Autumn 91, New Year's Eve. The latter would be a bonus day that would complete the 365-day cycle. On leap years, it would be preceded by Leap Day.
This would be the perfect calendar, which could also accomodate another unrelated day naming cycle, which is also meaningless, that is superimposed on our own calendar that we know so well. I'm referring to the week days, which originated in the mists of time, when the roaming visible planets (they had no telescopes in those times) were gods who gave their names to seven different days, which was the period taken by the moon to change its shape by a quarter. Obviously, 7 was decreed by the gods to be a magical number, besides which seven days was a convenient interval to have a day off work.
Like the meaningless parts of DNA that were copied from generation to generation for billions of years, the 7-day week remained intact throughout history, and will probably survive until the end of civilisation. Whatever calendar system one considers, it will need to have a 7-day week superimposed on it. So, besides a day being called Winter 1, or January 1, it also needs to be called by another name, which is Monday... or Friday... or Thursday... or ... what? You can never know in which day of the week a particular date will happen to fall, because the weeks drift each year.
That's unless we adopt a neat trick to defeat the fact that 365 isn't exactly divisible by 7. You get a remainder of one, which can be taken out of the whole system, and on that nameless day we hang on for dear life and desperately wait 24 hours until we can get back to our beloved day-of-the-week denomination. No. I have a better idea. We have a 24-hour long party, and call it New Year's Eve. New Year's Day would then be, ALWAYS, Sunday 1 January, or Sunday 1 Winter according to the seasons-inspired calendar described above. Each year, all dates would always fall on the same week day, so that (quoting the Wikipedia entry on the World Calendar):
In each year, every weekday is assigned to the same date. Quarterly statistics
are easier to compare, since the four quarters are the same length each
year. Economic savings occur from less need to print calendars because only
the year number changes. Work and school schedules do not need to
unnecessarily reinvent themselves, at great expense, year after
year. [The calendar] can be memorized by anyone and used similarly
to a clock [and] there is no need to change out copies of it every year.
The season-inspired calendar, then, would consist of four seasons of exactly 13 weeks each, all starting on a Sunday, and ending on a Saturday. In a leap year, we have two bonus days, which can be named Leap Day and New Year's Eve. This would mean a 4-day long weekend starting on Saturday, Autumn 91, and ending on Sunday, Winter 1. An ordinary 365-day long year, would end with a three-day long weekend: Sat Aut 91, New Year's Eve, Sun Win 01.
I do realise, however, that doing away with the 12-month system would be too disruptive to our society. As I said earlier, we are too attached to certain dates to simply write them off. And there are too many activities that are intimately bound with the monthly interval. Let's face it, we love our twelve months. Each one of them has developed a character that is particular for every one of us.
So, here is my proposal for a calendar that keeps the same week day for each date, not only within each year, but also keeps the same weekday for each day of each month. It's easy to memorise, even if you have a weak memory.
All the months are exactly the same, except for the names, and the weather conditions. They will each commence on a Sunday, and will consist of four weeks:
Sunday 1st to Saturday 7th
Sunday 8th to Saturday 14th
Sunday 15th to Saturday 21st
Sunday 22nd to Saturday 28th
Bonus days - 29, 30 - in between Saturday 28th and Sunday 1st, making a nice long weekend.
Dead easy to remember. Yes, there will be a Friday the 13th each month instead of an average of once every 7 months. Oh dear, how scary. I think it's about time we grew up and stopped believing such silly superstitions.
Twelve 30-day months gives 360 days, and leaves us with five days on our hands. We will need to revive an ancient Roman tradition, which gave rise to the modern day Christmas holiday period, and invent a new one to celebrate the peak of summer. The extra five days can be distributed as follows: Estivalia I, Estivalia II, Estivalia III inserted between 30 July and 1 August (a lovely 7-day summer break - or winter break in the southern hemisphere), and Saturnalia I, Saturnalia II between 30 December and 1 January (6-day Christmas break). Leap years will enjoy an additional Saturnalia III.
Each month will end with a long weekend, consisting of four days. Saturday, 2 days with no name, and Sunday. Too many holidays? Not really. In fact the present calendar and the proposed calendar would have practically the same number of days off work. Let's compare:
Present (Gregorian) calendar:
52 weekends = 104 days
an additional approx. 12 public holidays
optional vacation leave: 24 days
average "sick" leave: 8 days
Total days off work: 148 days
Proposed (Antonian) calendar:
48 weekends = 96 days
'Bonus' days (2 per month) = 24 days
Estivalia (between July and August) = 3 days
Saturnalia (between December and January) = 2 days
"Sick" leave (you are officially allowed to use them all, even if you're not sick) = 23 days
Total days off work: 148 days
Some other features of the Antonian calendar
Christmas: most people take the end of year festival very seriously, so it needs to be considered carefully. The date itself of Christmas day would need to shift. The dates would be Friday 27 Dec (Christmas Eve), Saturday 28 Dec (Christmas Day), 29 December, 30 December, Saturnalia I, Saturnalia II (New Year's Eve), Sunday 1 January. As is customary in the present system, one might add a few days of "sick" leave (given an alternative politically correct name) before and/or after the whole shebang, et voilà, Christmas is well and truly catered for, with non-essential services workers all getting a 6-day break from work (7 days in leap years).
Public holidays: national feasts and commemorations are celebrated in the 'bonus' days without weekday name, or during a weekend. To take the case of Malta, with which I'm most familiar:
New Year's Day - Sunday 1 January (no change)
St Paul's shipwreck - Sunday 8 February
St Joseph's feast - Sunday 22 March
Jum il-Ħelsien - 30 March
Workers' Day - Sunday 1 May (no change)
Sette Giugno - Saturday 7 June (so the name can stay the same...)
L-Imnarja - 29 June (no change)
Santa Marija / Ferragosto / Assumption Day - Sunday 15 August (no change)
Il-Vitorja - Sunday 8 September (no change)
Jum l-Indipendenza - Saturday 21 September (no change)
Il-Kunċizzjoni - Sunday 8 December (no change)
Jum ir-Repubblika - Sunday 15 December
The beauty of this calendar is that I never needed to check to work out the day of the week of all these dates! And an incredible 8 out of 12 holidays would keep exactly the same date. Others would need to shift by a couple of days. It's happened before, and in fact it's even now the practice in Malta to celebrate Ascension Day and the Epiphany (and previously several other religious feasts) on the Sunday closest to the actual date.
Estivalia: this is similar to Saturnalia, but it's inserted between July and August. Here the sequence is Saturday 28 July, 29 July, 30 July, Estivalia I, Estivalia II, Estivalia III, Sunday 1 August. A seven-day summer/winter holiday, to which one can again add a few days of "sick" leave...
Easter: there is no fixed date for Easter, and the endless shifting of this feast and so many others that are strictly fixed to it causes so much trouble to fixers of schedules of whatever organisation. But I doubt if any religion will ever accept decoupling the date of Easter from that of the full moon, so I guess we'll have to live with this constant shifting. In some countries Good Friday is a public holiday, and the Antonian calendar would need to acknowledge this. Governments might decide, then, in order to recover the day of productivity lost due to this feast, to allocate 22 instead of 23 days of "sick" leave...
That's it. The Antonian Calendar is invented, and in a few minutes it's going to be published. It was an enjoyable trip of speculation on the way we might organise our days. I think it would be a fun calendar. It will of course have no impact whatsoever on human civilisation. So why did I bother writing all this? Well, I've been figuring it out for such a long time, that it would be a pity not to share it with you, dear reader. Good night!
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