Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an article by “the numbers guy,” Charles Forelle, about the problems of our modern calendar. Everyone knows the most elementary aspect of the problem: we never know what day of the week any significant event will fall on. (Quick: do you remember what day of the week 9/11 was? I don’t; I’d have to look it up!). This means that the major religious festivals, because they are moveable feasts, will fall on a Monday, a Saturday, a Wednesday, etc. Even those that don’t have all the complications associated with the lunar calendar a la Easter are still linked to specific dates: Michaelmas, September 29; Christmas, December 25; and so on and so on. Most of us (myself included) can’t even predict what day of the week our own birthday will fall on in a given year.
There are less obvious drawbacks to the Gregorian calendar as well. For example, the year is traditionally broken down into four quarters. But under our current calendar, they are of unequal length. Q1 (Jan-Mar) is 90 days, except in leap years, when it’s 91; Q2 (Apr-Jun) is 91; Q3 (Jul-Sep) is 92; Q4 (Oct-Dec) is 92. Also, of course, every 400 years we have a nonleap year when we’re expecting a leap year. It’s all very complicated.
All of this complication ensures a steady source of revenue for makers of calendars, but doesn’t do anyone else a whole lot of good, as far as most people can see.
There have been numerous efforts to reform the calendar over the years, but none of them has had much success. In Forelle’s article, which I link to but I suspect will disappear soon because the WSJ is vaporware, Forelle reviews a couple of contenders for new calendars: Symmetry454, a creation of Irv Bromberg at the University of Toronto, and The World Calendar, first proposed by the United Nations in the 1950s and kept alive today by Wayne Edward Richardson of theworldcalendar.org.
Both proposals keep our traditional 7-day week; all they do is tinker with the months and the leap years to make things come out fairly regular. Bromberg describes his symmetry454 very concisely:
The Symmetry454 calendar is a simple perpetual solar calendar that conserves the traditional 7-day week, has symmetrical equal quarters comprised of 4+5+4 weeks, and starts every month on Monday.
Holidays are fixed, every month starts on a Monday, every quarter has the same number of days, and each month has 4 or 5 weeks. The one sticking point is leap years: there’s a hard-to-remember algorithm that adds an extra week in December every 5 or 6 years. There’s some sort of symmetry after 293 years, but really, that isn’t much of a selling point to us humans, whose lifespan is somewhat shy of that goal.
The World Calendar doesn’t hold with Bromberg’s 35-day months, but it has its own quirks. Like S454, the WC is perpetual, but instead of each month starting on a Monday, every quarter starts on a Sunday, and subsequent months start on Wednesdays or Fridays. Quarters are equal (91 days each), the 12 months have lengths that we’re used to (31 and 30 numbered days), and the solution to the leap year is easier to stomach than Bromberg’s solution: December always has an extra, unnumbered day, called Worldsday, as a year-end holiday. And every leap year, we get an extra, unnumbered day in June as well.
But I can’t find any mention of how Richardson determines when a leap year is needed, so I’d like to see that before I decide which of these quixotic schemes I’d like to wager on.
And against the whole idea of calendar reform, there’s the problem any perpetual calendar faces: boredom. Every date falls on the same day of the week, year in and year out. Of course this is one of the major selling points of a perpetual calendar, but it’s also, at least to some extent, a drawback. For example, my birthday happens to fall on a Friday in the World Calendar scheme, which is a pretty nice day to celebrate. End of the week and all that. So I wouldn’t mind adopting this calendar. But what about those poor people who get stuck with a Monday, year in and year out?
All told, I kind of enjoy the quirks of our current calendar…And really, I like getting new calendars every year. The designs are fun, the joy of discovering what day of the week my birthday is on, etc. etc. Look how boring the two proposals are on paper (courtesy of the WSJ):
Really not the most inspired layout, huh? For now, at least, I’m happy to march in step with (most of) the rest of the world on the calendar thing.
The Gregorian calendar leap year rule also applies to The World Calendar:
Centennial years evenly divisible by 400 are not leap years. All other years evenly divisible by four (4) are leap years. ((E-mail from WSJ readers pointed out that http://www.theworldcalendar.org is missing that detail –but not for much longer.))
You excellently summarize the calendar problems that we and all of our ancestors have encountered but the WSJ just indirectly referenced the primary advantage: TWC is so simple that anyone can memorize it. A memorizable calendar is available without a physical crutch, eyes open or eyes closed! Advantages of a DREAM calendar will likely offset some birthday ‘boredom’. Like now, TWC tells no one when to celebrate their birthday. For example, BING ‘Queen Elizabeth II birthday celebrations’.
By choice and for variety –but not, like now, because of mandatory annual obsolescence– replace your favorite TWCs but keep them to trade with friends or give to grandchildren, etc.
Noting a slight correction: TWCA founder Elisabeth Achelis named TWC in 1930 but the idea has been around since at least 1834. The UN postponed it indefinitely –sine die– in 1956.
THANKS!
Wayne Edward Richardson (‘Wayne’)
Director, The World Calendar Association – International
E-mail to twca@theworldcalendar.org
‘SHOULDN’T OUR CALENDAR BE AS SIMPLE AS OUR CLOCK?’
http://www.theworldcalendar.org/TWCandDescription.pdf
Thanks for the comment, Wayne. I had idly thought up some alternative calendars a few years back, but TWCA beats my half-formed musings all hollow. And now that I know how leap years work in it, I think it makes more sense than that 454 calendar. Thanks also for the further details on the relative antiquity of TWC; do you know who (or at least in what forum) it was proposed back in 1834?
Ben,
Calendar history, I have noticed, becomes increasingly vague with age. The twelve-month, equal-quarter calendar idea that Elisabeth Achelis named The World Calendar might track back as early as 1745. The Italian priest Abbe´ Mastrofini generally receives credit for first publishing it in 1834.
http://www.theworldcalendar.org/TWCA-Then.htm offers an interesting summary of calendar reform history from last century.
Thank you for making the personal effort to understand The World Calendar. Please share http://www.theworldcalendar.org/TWCandDescription.pdf whenever possible. You’ll find that you are not alone in recognizing the need.
Wayne
I remember very clearly that 9/11 was a Tuesday. I have no idea why I remember that at all, much less remember it clearly. Pop
On 12 January I wrote that I would include missing leap year rule detail @ http://www.theworldcalendar.org. It is now correctly added to http://www.theworldcalendar.org/TWCandDescription.pdf.
Here is a correction to that same post: ‘Centennial years evenly divisible by 400 ARE leap years.’ (Without the extra ‘not’.) My apologizes if this error has already messed with anyone’s plans for 2100.
Wayne