As
we saw in the previous post in these threads, the Gregorian calendar is
practically perfect in terms of the duration of the year, since its
error is about three days every ten thousand years, so we won’t have to worry
about introducing new corrections until about the year 3500.
However,
the calendar also affects the distribution of the year in
months, weeks and days; and there, our calendar has some
drawbacks: first, the months have variable durations; second, the week and the
year do not keep pace: an ordinary year of 365 days contains 52 weeks and one
day; a leap year, 52 weeks and two days. Therefore, the position in the week of
every day of the month varies from year to year. For instance, July 1st 2020
was a Wednesday; the same date in 2021 will be a Thursday; in 2022, a Friday;
in 2023, a Saturday; and in 2024, a Monday. The leap is one day in normal years
and two days in leap years for all days after February 29th, and in the
following year for days before that date. That is the reason for the English
name leap year, for the succession of
the days of the week for a given date leaps in those years.
The
main consequence is this: we cannot have a unique calendar, valid for every year.
The cycle of the days of the week is repeated with a periodicity of 28 years
(the product of the seven days of the week by the four leap year cycle), but in
fact there
are just fourteen different calendars: seven for normal years, seven for
leap years. In addition, it’s difficult to know, without consulting a calendar,
on which day of the week falls a certain date. This is annoying, especially in
a world as copious in commercial and administrative activities as ours. Wouldn't
it be possible to avoid it?
Modern
attempts to reform the calendar go in that direction. In 1954, the UN adopted a
resolution, at the proposal of the Indian Union, in which all member countries
were asked to study the possibility of reaching an agreement to universally
adopt a calendar reform that would affect the division of the year in months
and weeks. Two proposals received the attention of the international
organization. The first, the international fixed
calendar, divides the year into thirteen months of 28 days, plus
a supernumerary day (two, in the case of leap years), which would not occupy a place
in the week. The names of the months would be the same as now, except for the
additional month, called sol,
which would be located between June and July. All months would be identical, for
they’d cover four exact weeks, and all would start on Sunday. We would have a
unique calendar, valid for every month and every year: the one in the following
table. The extra day, the year end day, would be placed
between Saturday, December 28th and Sunday, January 1st of the following year.
The other extra day in leap years would be located between Saturday June 28th
and Sunday Sun 1th. This calendar has a drawback: the thirteen months of the
year don’t distribute well between the four seasons: each season would last
three months and one week.
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International fixed
calendar
The world calendar avoids this problem by dividing
the year into twelve months, three per season, with the same names as the
current months. The three months of each quarter would last, respectively,
thirty-one, thirty, and thirty days. Each quarter would consist of thirteen
weeks (ninety-one days) and would always start on a Sunday. In this case, the
quarter calendar in the following table would apply to all quarters and all
years. The first month of the table would apply to January, April, July and
October. The second, to February, May, August and November. The third, to
March, June, September and December. The additional day that would complete the
365 of the ordinary years, the world day,
would be placed between Saturday, December 30th and Sunday, January 1st of the
following year. The extra day of leap years would be placed between Saturday
June 30th and Sunday July 1st.
The
main difficulty to reach an agreement for a reform of the calendar has a
religious origin: Jews, Adventists and Seventh-day Baptists oppose breaking the
strict succession of the days of the week with the insertion of extra days,
which would affect the interval between two consecutive Sabbaths, for them
untouchable. The Catholic Church and many Protestant churches, on the other
hand, don’t seem to have a problem to accept the change. Since these proposals
were made, 66 years ago, nothing has been done. Change does not appear to be
imminent.
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World calendar
The same post in Spanish
Manuel Alfonseca
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