Download 30 Days Hath

“30 DAYS HATH SEPTEMBER, APRIL, JUNE & NOVEMBER…”
Since their invention, calendars have been used to fix dates
and events like harvests or religious festivals. Ancient
civilizations tied their calendars to whatever natural
phenomena they could most easily observe, like seasonal
changes in the weather, the phases of the moon, or the
cycles of the sun. But the cycles of the sun and moon do
not match because a lunar year is about 11 days shorter than a solar year.
In ancient Rome, a priest would observe the sky and announce a new moon
cycle to the king. For centuries afterward, Romans referred to the first day of
each new month as Kalends from the word calare, which means "to proclaim”.
This is where our word “calendar” comes from.
The first Roman calendars were borrowed from the Greek lunar calendar.
The year had only 10 months, beginning with March. Sometime during the 7th
century BC, the Roman king added two extra months so the lunar (moon)
calendar would match up with the solar (sun) calendar. But the addition of these
extra months did not fix the Roman calendar for long. Roman senators
sometimes voted to add extra months to the calendar so they could stay in
office. The calendar year became out of sync with the seasons – winter was
coming even though the calendar month was September, summer came during
the calendar’s spring months. Imagine having Halloween in June!
By the time Julius Caesar came to power in 46BC, the calendar needed major
fixing. Caesar consulted with a Greek astronomer and in order to fix the
calendar right away, he had to add 80 days to the current year – so the year
46BC had 445 days and became known as “The Year of Confusion”. Caesar then
created the Julian Calendar, an early version of the calendar we use today. It
had 365¼ days, 12 months starting with January, and an extra day added every
four years in February. But a mistake was made – the extra day was added every
three years and sometimes Leap Years were avoided because they were
considered unlucky. Eventually, the calendar would need to be fixed again.
In the year 525AD, a priest was asked to create a calendar so that Christians
would celebrate Easter on the same day all over the world. The priest was also
a mathematician and an astronomer and calculated what he thought was the
birth date of Jesus and made this the year 1AD – “anno domini”, the year of the
Lord. Everything before that date was “BC” (“Before Christ”). This calendar
was used throughout Europe until 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII ordered
changes to the calendar.
The Julian calendar needed to be fixed – it was off by 10 days. So Pope
Gregory declared that Thursday, October 4, 1582 would be followed the next day
by Friday, October 15, 1582. This new calendar was called the Gregorian
calendar. Some countries used the new calendar immediately while others took
several hundred years to adopt it. England decided to adopt it in 1752 for itself
and all of its colonies. But 11 days had to be dropped from the calendar so
Wednesday, September 2, 1752 was followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752.
For some dates, even the year changed! According to the old Julian calendar,
George Washington was born on February 11, 1731; but by the new Gregorian
calendar, his birthday is February 22, 1732! Today, the Gregorian calendar is
used world-wide for business purposes, but many religions continue to use
traditional calendars for determining dates of religious significance.
There are two new calendars being proposed. One is called the International
Fixed Calendar which divides the year into 13 months with 28 days in each and
one extra day at the end of the year that does not belong to any month. The
other is called the World Calendar and it divides the year into four quarters with
three months in each quarter. Two of the months have 30 days and one month
has 31 days and there is also an extra day at the end of the year. What do you
think of these calendars? Would your birthday still exist? When would you
celebrate it?