Well, here we are in the year numbered 2022. You could say it as year two thousand and twenty-two or as year twenty twenty-two. Either way it will be an interesting one.
One year at the dump I found a book on numerology someone was throwing out, so I picked it up and brought it home for a read. It’s a little like astronomy where people use numbers to predict or influence the future. I am sure they are excited this year because the year’s number has three twos in it. You add those up and you get the number six and according to the internet, six is a good number and has a ray of hope associated with it. We could all use a ray of hope about now.
This is, of course, the time of year to take down last year’s calendar and put up this year’s version. I am one of those people who needs a calendar to keep track of the days and to help nudge my memory to see if there is anything important, I need to do today, like take the garbage out or visit the dentist.
In history, when countries and populations were isolated from one another, just about every society of any size developed a calendar of some sort to keep track of the days and years. Some were quite inventive and interesting, but it took a lot of centuries and trial and error before a somewhat standardized calendar emerged.
Rome was a big empire and civilization, with influence over a lot of countries and people and Julius Caesar hired a group of astronomers and mathematicians to come up with the most accurate calendar they could.
The calendar was used for around 1600 years until it became obvious to many that the days and months weren’t coinciding with the earth’s actual motion and rotation any longer. The planet doesn’t revolve around the sun in 365 days like they thought, but in 365.2425 days. Over time, those 0.2425 days add up. So, the Julian calendar got out of whack and the Gregorian calendar replaced it with an extra day added every four years. They are the ones that started counting years and that is how we are now at year numbered 2022. Personally, I think they should have started counting from the end of the last ice age, when we entered the Holocene Epoch making it somewhere around 11,552.
Sooner or later, someone will invent a new more accurate and user-friendly calendar. In public school the teacher was giving us the basics. An hour has sixty minutes, a day has twenty-four hours, a week has seven days. The numbers were a little odd but apparently, they had been chosen because they were so divisible. Except for the seven days of course.
Then it came to months, and it turns out every month had a different number of days which completely defies logic and reason. It made one wonder what the calendar makers had been drinking or smoking. But what was even more baffling was everyone seemed to accept this insanity. I asked a couple questions about this, and the teacher suggested if I didn’t like it, I was free to reinvent it. Otherwise just memorize the months and days like everyone else.
So, I did a little math that night and it was an easy fix. The calendar could have 13 months of 28 days or four weeks. That would come to 364 days so just tack on a day for new years, two for leap years and it worked out fine. The calendar would be the same every year. It would save an incredible amount of money, chaos, and confusion. I showed the teacher my work and she wasn’t impressed. She probably didn’t understand.
I discovered it is hard to get people to change outdated customs and ways of thinking. To this day, I still can’t figure out which month has how many days, but I live in hope that sometime in the future we will switch to a more sensible calendar. Happy year 11,552 Holocene Epoch.
