Adapted from
CALENDAR REFORM
From the Journal of
Calendar Reform, SECOND QUARTER 1948, pages 67-78
By John Rutherford
John
Rutherford, a Canadian banker who knows full well the business handicap
of an illogical calendar, has performed a service by his research
into the subject of reform. As
a Director of an Advertising and Sales Executives Club and a member
of the Royal Economic Society and other business and technical associations,
he realizes the difficulties inherent in the proposed change.
But he tackles them head-on and draws a spirited picture, on
the one hand, of the absurdity of rational beings continuing as they
are and, on the other hand, the undoubted benefits of a change calendar-wise.
To suddenly blot our calendar from existence
would result in a far worse confusion to our social organization than
was the Babel of tongues to the builders of the tower. And yet it is only when February comes along
with its annual question mark—28 days or 29?—that we pay any attention
to the calendar’s structure.
Herodotus wrote his history without a date, but modern business
couldn’t get far without a date line on its letters, checks and contracts. The precise measurement of the year is of paramount
importance to all civilized peoples.
Time enters into the intelligent procedure necessary to the
orderly functioning of government, requirements of agriculture, obligations
of commerce, and the observances of religion.
We are not concerned in this article with
any abstract or philosophical “time.”
Even Einstein and Eddington have had to catch trains by ordinary
clock time, and make appointments by the same calendar as has been
used by common people. Newton
was easier to understand than the theory of relativity: he described
time as “measured duration,” and that is the kind of time which exercises
most people today.
Our contention is that when Hamlet mentioned
“The time is out of joint,” he might well have been talking about
the modern calendar, though it may come as a surprise to many people
that anyone should raise a question about its excellence or accuracy. Has it not come down to us hallowed by memories
and associations since the beginnings of time? Are not our birthdays and weddings and other
anniversaries irretrievably involved in the present arrangement?
Of recent years an increasing pressure for
improvement has come from business groups and social statisticians,
who find the present irregularities of month intervals a serious obstacle
to the achievement of comparability of records.
In fact, practical economic and social conveniences are compelling
motives toward reform. Of
course, the only justification for changing is to secure something
more satisfactory in its place. The
question before the world is: What
is offered in the way of reform, what will it achieve, and is it worth
the bother and temporary confusion?
Calendar reform is no longer solely the business
of astronomers. The changes
with which they dealt in former reforms had to do with adjusting the
calendar to the length of the sun year.
That task was finally accomplished with the Gregorian revision
of 1582. The reforms now exercising mankind have nothing
to do with astronomical equations, but with the composition and arrangements
of the calendar’s months and weeks within the year. The main need is for a perpetual calendar,
one that remains unchanged year after year.
It is really remarkable how long-suffering
people are with the present arrangement.
They are exasperated by railway time-table symbols such as
asterisks, daggers and dots, showing that some trains do to run on
Sundays, or on holidays, or in the winter.
Yet the same people take for granted, or at least without outspoken
resentment, similar contradictions in the calendar.
Let us admit that the venerable ancients deserve
credit for knowing as much as they did about the march of the seasons,
but then we must go on to say that there is something absurd in the
fact that activities of the high-speed age are still regulated by
a hodge-podge of months invented by the Romans over two thousand years
ago, and only patched up since. It
was Julius Caesar who gave us the basis of our present calendar, but
it was for other reasons that Brutus and his friends stabbed him.
As a result of Julius’ work we have to recite a little nursery
rhyme about “thirty days hath September” which reminds one of “Mairzy
doats.” (1) *
Pope Gregory’s Calendar
The calendar in common use is the Gregorian
calendar, a modification of the Julian calendar. The convenient 365 ¼-day mathematical division of the Julian year
was 11 minutes and 14 seconds longer than the sun’s period, and each
Julian year gradually advanced beyond the course of the sun to that
extent. One unearned day was gained by the calendar
every 128 years. Toward the
close of the 16th century there was a difference of 10
days, so that the equinox fell on 11 March of the calendar instead
of on 21 March. This was not nearly so serious an error as
that corrected by Julius and his astronomer, but the world was progressing
to the point where it demanded greater accuracy.
Pope Gregory XIII
stepped in, with his astronomers, Aloysius and Antonio Lilius, and
his publicist, Christopher Clavius.
By a Bull issued in 1582, Pope Gregory proclaimed that the
10 days between 5 and 14 October were to be omitted in the following
year. He admonished creditors
to take account of this time and add 10 days at the end of periods
when loans would come due. At
the same time, he decreed that century years not divisible by 400
were to be omitted as leap years.
By the time England got around to making the change, in 1752,
the lag was 11 days. The difference between the Old and New Styles
was 11 days after 1700, 12 days after 1800, and it has been 13 days
since 1900. It will remain
13 days until 2100.
New Year’s Day has had its changes, too.
In England as late as the thirteenth century the year was reckoned
from Christmas Day. In the twelfth century the Anglican Church
began the year with the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin
(Lady Day) on 25 March, and this practice was adopted generally in
the fourteenth century. Then,
in 1752, the legal New Year’s Day was changed to 1 January.
Still Far From Perfect
So there we are, with a calendar that has
come through many adventures and is still far from perfect. As a matter of fact, a really perfect calendar
is impossible. It has to be
a compromise, for it attempts to reconcile natural fixed periods,
which are not reconcilable. The
things to be desired are the greatest accuracy combined with the greatest
feasible convenience. We cannot scrap or change our days or our years
without altering the motion of the sun or earth—those are immovable
obstacles. We could, but do
not desire to, change our week; the seven-day week is too deeply imbedded
in tradition, religion and convenience.
But we can change our month, which is an irrational division
of time conforming to neither moon nor sun.
The irregularities of the Gregorian calendar
have become increasingly evident in these days of swift communication,
complicated business calculations, and statistical comparisons. The calendar, in short, is out of date. It has come down to us from a time when trade
and economic life in general were organized upon a purely local basis.
The month and week periods are a hodge-podge in both composition
and arrangement. The months are not only unequal (31, 30, 29 or 28 days) but (excepting
February) contain more than a whole number of weeks and in addition
change their weekday composition, and the weeks overlap within the
months. There is a variation of 11 per cent between
the length of February in ordinary years and the length of a 31-day
month. There may be a variation of 19 per cent in
the number of working days in a month, between 21 days and 25 days. A variation of this extent in a unit which
is used as a base for the great majority of reports compiled in business
is obviously a serious defect.
Where did the “week” come from? The name is from Wikon, German for change
or succession. The fourth
of The Ten Commandments requires observance of a seven-day week. The Saxons are said to have borrowed the week
from some eastern nation, while other authorities say Constantine
introduced it in 321 A.D. The
Chinese get along with a week of five days.
There are, in one sense, nearly 200 “weeks” in North America,
due to the efforts of publicists to sell their ideas and wares: “Be Kind to Animals Week, Clean Up Week, Apple Week, Temperance
Week,” and so on. Perhaps
something may be done, coincidentally with calendar reform, to remove
this affliction.
Business Suffers
Shifting of the days makes it difficult to
fix with precision the dates of periodical events. The businessperson plotting the next year is at a disadvantage because
calendars are not printed so far in advance. Even reciting the little nursery rhyme does not tell how many Sundays
and Saturdays there will be in next May, or whether 24 May is a mid-week
or weekend holiday. Try figuring
out, without looking at the calendar (even if you have one) what day
1 July will be the year after next.
Consider the time lost. We
count the 30-day months on the knuckles of our left hand, and the
31-day months on the knuckles of our right hand, add the balance of
the current month’s days and the first of July—and if the calculation
is correct we learn what the day is. Using The World Calendar, the date would always
fall on a Sunday.
Consider a corporation composed of several
departments. There is one
department that deals with temporary workers whose wages are computed
on a day basis. There is another with permanent employees having
pay envelopes based on the week, or on the half-monthly interval. Another, in charge of shipping or transportation,
uses the month for its records. The major financing of the corporation, including dividends, bond
interest, tax payments, and general reports, is computed on a quarterly
and semi-annual basis. The
departments of this business, for unavoidable reasons, have to work
on the basis of unrelated units of time.
Adjustments have to be made continually, because the day, the
week, the month and the quarter never agree.
Coordination is not impossible, but is much more difficult
than it need be.
There are many other troubles caused by the
Gregorian calendar. An annual
meeting, fixed by the by-laws to take place on the second Thursday
in January, may fall on any date from the 8th to the 14th. Christmas sometimes falls on a Friday, with the resulting headache
for factories and stores in debating whether to open on Saturday or
not. Some months have 24 working
days, while others have 27. When holidays move through the week, workers
find that certain recurring problems of wages, vacations and seasonal
work have to be met according to a different formula every year.
If they are paid on a daily basis, the interruption in their
wages because of the holiday has to be taken into account. Under the present calendar they have to do this in a different way
every year. When school terms
start on the day after Labor Day, which is the first Monday in September,
this can be any date from 1 September to 7 September.
There may be 53 paydays in a year or only 52. A firm that pays its employees on Friday and has its biggest sales
on Saturday would find December 1948 (1993, 1999, 2004, 2010) a slim month, because it has five Fridays and only four
Saturdays and one Saturday is a holiday. (With eyes closed, saw GMR happy
next to living room piano. 11:55
pm 031706) The variation of days in a month makes difficulty for business
people. Since the various
days of the week are not of the same value as regards the volume of
trade, there can be no accurate monthly comparisons between one year
and another. Saturday may be the “big day” in one line of business, and other
days in other lines. An extra
Saturday in a given month, as compared with the same month in another
year, results in seriously distorted figures if two such months are
compared without proper and elaborate adjustment.
For example, May 1946 (2002) had 4 Sundays and 4 Saturdays,
while May 1947 (2003) had 5 Saturdays and 4 Sundays, and May 1948
(2004) had 5 Sundays and 5 Saturdays. This disparity means that stores
which do a big business on Saturday cannot compare intelligently May
1946 (2002) and May 1948 (2004): similar lack of comparability of
corresponding month of consecutive years applies to all lines of endeavor—railway
systems, banking, department stores sales, church attendance and income,
etc. (2) **
What Has Been Achieved
Before discussing specific plans to amend
the calendar, consider what has been accomplished in other fields
of time measurement. Since
1883 the standard system of standard time by zones has been gradually
accepted. There are six time zones in Canada: Atlantic,
Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific and Yukon. They have been accepted so completely that
when some communities endeavored to introduce daylight saving time
before the war (WWII) the
people revolted, declaring they would keep to “God’s time”—which was
really the artificial standard time.
Similar acceptability has been won in Europe for the 24-hour
clock, and this is now in common use everywhere among armed forces.
The International Date Line is another triumph of modern thought
over old ideas. It is drawn through the Pacific Ocean near
longitude 180 degrees. When
the line is crossed from west to east a second 24-hour period is given
the same date and name as the 24-hour period just passed.
On crossing the line in the opposite direction, a calendar
day is omitted.
Plans for Improvement
But that is an aside, merely to show that
there is nothing immutable about the measurement of time. We come now to a consideration of the plans
for adjusting all the shortcomings we have found in the Gregorian
calendar. There have been at various times as many as
300 schemes. When the question
first came before the League of Nations in 1923 the delegates had
185 different proposals. By
1931 the League had reduced these to two.
Auguste Comte, the French philosopher, advocated
a 13-month year more than 100 (circa 1849) years ago and many similar
plans were considered and rejected on the occasion of a prize contest
conducted by the French Astronomical Society in 1887.
The 13-month plan, sponsored of late years by the International
Fixed Calendar League, would retain the 365¼-day year, but would rearrange
the months, days and weeks. There
would be 13 uniform months, each quartered into four whole weeks. Each week would begin with Sunday and end with
Saturday; each day would fall uniformly upon the same monthly date. A new month, to be called “Sol” because it
would contain the summer solstice, would be inserted between June
and July. There would be a
year-end day belonging to no month, and in leap years there would
be another extra day inserted between June and Sol.
An advantage claimed for this type calendar is that clocks
could have an extra hand to show the day and date.
There are already some firms that use the 13-month year for
accounting purposes.
Objections to the radical changes necessitated
by a changeover to 13 months are many. There would be 30 dates lost and 28 added, whereas the 12-month
calendar to be described next would entail only 3 dates lost and 3
added. Under the 13-month calendar all dates now falling
on the 29th, 30th or 31st of any
month would be changed, because that calendar has only 28 days in
its months. The June bride would lose two days from her
month, and half the remaining days would have a new name. These effects on anniversaries are only sentimental,
but are likely to have great influence, because there are more June
brides and people with month-end anniversaries than there are statisticians.
The 13-month calendar would necessitate new rules and tales
for calculating interest and discounts, which would make difficulties
for everybody from school children to bankers. It would
make necessary an extra closing of all accounts and reports rendered
on a monthly basis, and would add 8 1/3 per cent to the clerical, postage and similar costs of
doing business. In addition,
where quarterly and semi-annual statements were required, three other
closing dates would be necessary, since not one of the first three
quarters of the year would end at the end of a month.
To recompute the numerous indexes of prices, production and
other phases of economic activity would be a costly procedure.
In the case of many of the statistical series linking the present
with the past, it would be impossible to convert the records of the
past into a form comparable with the present.
Then, too, the number 13 is unpopular, not only because it
is difficult to divide by and impossible to divide into, but also
because of the superstitions attaching to it.
The 13-month calendar would have 13 months with Friday falling
on the 13th every month, 13 times a year.
The 13-month enthusiasts argue that the advocates
of the 12-month revision do not go far enough because they base their
appeal on “moderate changes.” “Can it be said,” ask the 13-monthers,
“that an argument like that reflects a motive to achieve a genuine
reform?” Well, a realist may well answer “yes,” and
suggest to the 13-monthers that on their own argument they should
abandon their own relatively mild reforms and sponsor the plan of
Mr. B. Richmond, whose address when he circularized his scheme was
Singapore. Mr. Richmond would shatter the entire system
of time telling and build it anew—100 seconds to the minute; 100 minutes
to the hour. He would have
60 weeks in a year; his months would consist of 6 weeks of 6 days
each, and he would have 5 spare days (6 in leap years) to be used
as holidays. Under Mr. Richmond’s
thorough-going revision, everyone could carry a watch which would
show on one face: seconds, minutes, hours dates, months, fifths of
a year and also whether it was day or night.
The World Calendar
More modest in its scope, and seemingly generally
approved, is The World Calendar.
This consists of an equal number of days and weeks in each
quarter, the same number of weekdays (26) in each month, and every
year alike. It attempts no violence with the Gregorian
arrangement of time, but rearranges the days of the months so that
the first month in each quarter has 31 days and each of the other
two has 30.
It is claimed that equalization of the quarters
with 91 days in each instead of the present 90 to 92 would be of substantial
benefit. For instance, under
The World Calendar plan a quarterly note can be made an exact quarter
of the annual rate, and a 30-day not a third of the quarterly rate. This is true even in the 31-day months, because
the extra day is always a Sunday.
Quarterly payments., such as insurance, would fall due on the
same weekday and date in every quarter, and could be arranged conveniently
near pay days. Shifting holidays
would no longer break awkwardly into the week from year to year, but
would have the same day and date.
Any specific day, week, or month of one year would be comparable
to the same day, week or month in any other year.
If you were born on Wednesday, 11 April, your birthday would
always fall on Wednesday, and all other anniversaries and holidays
would be similarly fixed. Any date that is now set by the day of the
week, such as “the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November”
would always fall upon the same date.
Easter, it has been suggested, could be on the second Sunday
in April, the 8th of the month, but this is recognized
as an ecclesiastical matter, and its decision is not necessary to
acceptance of The World Calendar.
Supporters of this calendar emphasize the
importance of preserving continuity as far as may be between the present
calendar and whatever revision is made.
The World Calendar would leave six of the twelve months comparable;
there is no sharp unnatural break with habit.
To put this calendar into effect with the least disturbance,
the active business year should end with 31 December falling on a
Saturday.
Help for Statisticians
One of the outstanding benefits of the calendar
reform would be in the field of statistics. “As compared with the same period last year” is a phrase full of
headaches for a statistician. The
irregularity of the calendar means deductions for fewer business days,
adjustment for more Saturdays, and something has to be done about
the fact that one half-year consists of 181 days and the second half-year
of 184 days. Since the beginning of the century, and especially
during the twenty-year period between 1928 and 1948, there has been
a remarkable growth in the recorded and published quantitative information regarding
the operation of our economic institutions.
There are two ways in which statistical series
and analyses would be affected by a reform of the calendar: first by reducing or increasing the time involved
in tabulating statistics and analyzing them; and second, by increasing
or decreasing the usefulness of the analyses to business people, scientists
and government officials. How
can monthly comparisons be made when two 30-day months can be so different
in their working period, even ignoring holidays?
It is claimed for The World Calendar that it would facilitate
these comparisons, because the same months in succeeding years would
have exactly the same makeup of working days, falling on the same
days of the week. It is admitted that because of seasonal differences
and differences in the distribution of holidays, consecutive months
would not be comparable even if of absolutely equal length and composition. It is only the corresponding months that would
be comparable—April with April—November with November, and so on. The value of statistics is measurable in terms
of the extent to which they permit accurate comparisons to be made
between the figures for current production, sales, and other activities,
and similar figures for corresponding periods of the past.
To achieve this with the 13-month calendar
would entail an enormous amount of work, and in many businesses it
would be an impossible task. For
example, the period 1 June to 28 June would correspond with our 21
May to 17 June, 1 Sol to 28 Sol with our 18 June to 15 July, and 1
July to 28 July with our 16 July to 12 August.
The World Calendar, on the other hand, would not necessitate
discarding existing statistical information, the adjustment being
so simple that the great mass of the previous data could still be
used.
Objections Not Imposing
Aside from the material objections to changing
the calendar, there may be others: affection for time-honored antiquities;
convictions arising out of religion; a belief that change is against
natural law, or just plain superstitious fear. The fact that the calendar
is basically 2,000 years old is not a good reason for opposing change,
though it may have a bearing upon the advisability of making any changes
as moderate as possible. The
argument of affection for time-honored antiquities does not hold water
because our calendar in its present form has been in use in English-speaking
countries for less than 200 years (less than 260 years by the year
2006), and in other countries for less than 20 years (less than 70
years by the year 2006). The plea that calendar change is “against nature”
brings nothing but smiles from those who have read the history of
calendar making. Calendars,
like clocks, are nothing but man-made time-measurement standards,
full of inconsistencies. The
whole basis of our measurement of time is fictitious.
The zero adopted for the day is the instant when a fictitious
body known as the “mean sun” is on some chosen meridian, which in
turn is an imaginary line running from pole to pole.
Even in building up the calendar, we erred:
we passed from 1 B.C. to
A.D. 1, disregarding the zero year, so that (in 2005 there are only
2005 years since 1 B.C. rather than 2006.)
The practice of dating our years from the birth of Christ grew
out of the suggestion of a Scythian Abbot, who brought forward the
suggestion years earlier, judging by an eclipse that occurred at the
time of King Herod’s death. So
we are probably wrong by four or five years, astronomically speaking,
and the new calendar enthusiasts argue that a few more changes would
not offend either morals or tradition.
The fear of Friday is quite as old as the
fear of the number 13, and it will take some generations to educate
people out of it, though the world has progressed somewhat from the
time when natives of Madagascar killed any baby born on an unlucky
day. The World Calendar would have four Fridays falling on the 13th,
compared with the 13 Fridays on the 13th in the 13-month
calendar.
Why Be Hidebound?
However, people who fuss so much as the democracies
over an hour’s change to daylight saving time are going to approach
a whole calendar change gingerly.
Resistance to corrections in the calendar has frequently produced
mass riots. In England, the
people blamed the crop failure on the calendar reform.
Believing that they had been cheated of 11 days’ wages, they
swarmed through the streets crying: “Give us back our fortnight.” Even as late as 1936, when Romania finally
gave in to the need of reform, the peasants became so violent that
police had to shoot down quite a number.
After the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar
in England, over one-third of all the litigation for the following
70 years was caused by the change. Certain dividends are still paid by the Bank
of England on dates based on Old Style, and the British Income Tax
year begins on 6 April, the New Style equivalent of 25 March Old Style. The 25th of March is Lady Day and
Quarter Day, but Whittaker’s Almanac still prints: April 6: Old Lady
Day.” When Caesar added the 90 days in 46 B.C., making
the year of 445 days called the Year of Confusion, one governor in
Gaul tried to collect taxes for the period.
Needs
Combined Operation
Reform of the calendar would be of little
value unless adopted by all countries having business dealing of any
magnitude. No country single-handed
could bring about the change. Several
large sections of the world have worked with different calendars in
the past, but the world is drawn so close by interests and communications
today that the situation would cause endless trouble.
To attempt this universal agreement, a special committee of
the League of Nations, consisting of delegates from 44 nations, including
Canada, was appointed after the first World War.
The matter was under consideration by various League bodies
since 1923, and 185 different proposals were boiled down to two. In 1937, the League explored international opinion. Of 45 replies, 14 governments indicated their
willingness to adopt The World Calendar, and only 6 governments took
a definite stand against reform.
The World Almanac of New York says: “The World Calendar is
the only plan now receiving serious international consideration.”
Dr. W.A. Riddle, accompanied by Moses B. Cotsworth
as technical adviser, represented Canada at the 1931 conference. The latter, who died in 1943, had been associated
with George Eastman, great United States supporter of the 13-month
calendar. At this conference
Canada’s vote was unofficial, but the Canadian Government had sent
an official opinion to the Secretary General of the League of Nations
in 1924 saying in the canny way of diplomacy: “They regard with favor
the idea of making such arrangements as may turn out to be practicable
relative to the fixation of the date of Easter to some particular
week, and to the correlation of the days of the week and the month.”
At the Fourth General Conference of the League, Canada was
among the 26 states that voted in favor of an act concerning the fixing
of Easter. Religious Opposition Slight
There is no religious opposition in sight
to day as there was when Pope Gregory XIII instituted his reforms. The three main religious groups of the world
are agreed that “no dogmatic obstacle” stands in the way of calendar
revision. The Archbishop of
Canterbury supported calendar reform in an address to the House of
Lords in 1936. He declared that he found it “impossible to
resist the plea for reform” which comes “with practical unanimity
from . . . . trade, industry, and commerce throughout the civilized
world.” The opinion of the Catholic Church was given
during the pontificate of Pope Pius X: “The Holy See declared that
it made no objection but invited the civil powers to enter into an
accord on the reform of the civil calendar, after which it would willingly
grant its collaboration in so far as the matter affected religious
feasts.”
As far back as 1928 the British Trades Union
Congress passes a resolution to the effect that the time was then
ripe for calendar reform. The
Labor Conference of the American States, held in Chile in 1936, recommended
approval of The World Calendar. The
International Labor Organization in the same year recognized the fact
“that the present calendar is very unsatisfactory from economic, social
and religious standpoints,” and called attention to the marked trend
in favor of revision.
It is essential that economists and business
men should have, during the next few years particularly, all the aid
possible from past business records, and at the same time whatever
easing of present and future pressures there may be due to inefficient
time measuring tools. Though the nations may be too busy just now
with other affairs to engage in calendar reform, many people hope
that another expectation for the period “After Peace” will be that
of a sane calendar.
(1) *
Page 2: A 1940’s song with
lyrics that begin, “I know a
ditty, nutty as a fruitcake / Goofy as a goon and silly as a loon
/ Some call it pretty, others call it crazy / But they all sing this
tune: // Mairzy doats And dozy doats / And liddle lamzy divey / A
kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? …”
(2) ** [Page 5: Obviously,
computers allow easier access to calendars, if a computer is available,
and computer programs can now readily analyze much that was calculated
manually in 1948. Even so,
computers simply do not cause all of the difficulties noted in this
article to go away. The point remains that more technology does
not eliminate the root cause of calendar deficiencies. In other words, contrast a) using a calculator
to apply knowledge of mathematics and b) using a calculator without
understanding mathematics. Then
take away the calculator. –Ed.]
Links
to this document: http://www.theworldcalendar.org/CalendarReform-1948Perspective.pdf
and http://www.theworldcalendar.org/CalendarReform-1948Perspective.htm
E-mail to: TWCA@TheWorldCalendar.org
Rev. 15 August 2009
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