New Year's Revolution

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In an obscure village during the Middle Ages lived an obscure middle-aged poet named Grzyczislaw Gregorian. One night the All-Knowing Cosmic Systems Analyst appeared to Grzyczislaw in a dream and spoke these words:

"Yea, verily, say I, this planet sorely needeth a better system for keeping track of the years."

"Gadzooks!" swore the dumfounded Grzyczislaw, who had never before encountered a systems analyst.

"Thus say I to you, that henceforth, every year into which the number four goeth without residue shall contain an extra day, unless the number 100 goeth in likewise and the number 400 goeth not. You, Grassislaw Gregorian, shall proclaim this unto all the world!"

"Grzyczislaw," corrected Grzyczislaw.

"Gesundheit," said the Cosmic Calendar-maker, vanishing.

"Amen," said the poet. Now wide awake, the humble bard sprang to his writing desk and wrote down every detail of his dream. Drunk with inspiration, Grzyczislaw decided that it was up to him to design the entire calendar. He named the seven days of the week for the seven basic forces of Nature, beginning with Sunday for the sun and Monday for the moon. Next came Tuesday, named for the tides (Tidesday), Wednesday for the wind (Windsday), Thursday for the earth (Th'earth'sday), Friday for the inferno (Fryday), and Saturday for the water (Saturatedday). Curiously, Grzyczislaw himself never touched water on Saturday, although he often came home in a saturated condition.

Finally, Grzyczislaw Gregorian wrote his now-famous poem:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one
Except February.

Having loused up the meter, Grzyczislaw gave up on the rhyme and went back to sleep.

Overwhelmed by the All-Knowing Cosmic Systems Analyst's keen logic and Grzyczislaw Gregorian's poetic masterpiece, the world hastened to adopt the new system. The calendar that we use even today is, indeed, known as the Gregorian Calendar.

Now Gregorian was truly an expert dreamer and poet, but he was no systems analyst. The Gregorian system of twelve months having 31, 30, 28 or 29 days is as preposterous as the English system of weights and measures. Days of the week are completely unrelated to the days of the month, the number of days per month varies with no pattern, and the New Year can begin on any day of the week. In short, the Gregorian system is about as well-conceived and easy to use as an elastic tape measure.

THIS PLANET SORELY NEEDETH A BETTER SYSTEM FOR KEEPING TRACK OF THE DAYS OF THE YEAR!!!

As Barry Goldwater or possibly Clifford Irving once said, "There is no power like that of an idea whose time has come." The time has come to introduce the Nolte Calendar, a modest proposal for keeping better track of the days of the year.

In attempting to design better calendars than Gregorian's, latter-day calendar reform fanatics have devised the "intercalary day". These are days which have neither a date nor a day of the week. Presumably, these "intercalary days", or Lucky Strike Extras, would become festival days, giving rise to the appropriate celebrations, business closings, greeting card sales, highway death tolls, and other manifestations of the holiday spirit.

Although calendars using "intercalary days" are an improvement, calendar reform is not simply a question of good new system versus bad old system. Plainly, the metric system of weights and measures is superior to the English system, yet the United States still clings stubbornly to the latter. The point is, people will need a good reason to go to all the trouble of replacing the present calendar with a new one.

Recently, an excellent reason for adopting a new calendar has emerged: the Four-Day Work Week. Business leaders assure us that within ten years the Four-Day Work Week will be as commonplace as the padded expense account. By a strange coincidence, the Nolte Calendar is ideally suited to the Four-Day Work Week.

Of all the days of the week, one day has traditionally been welcomed about as eagerly as a wino at a WCTU meeting. On most people's list of pleasant experiences, this day ranks somewhere between the surgical removal of hemorrhoids and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Therefore, the Nolte Calendar has been designed around a simple key principle:

NO MORE MONDAYS!!!

Observe what happens when this dismal day is eliminated. The resulting six-day week is divisible into either a four-day work week and a two-day weekend, or into equal three-day shifts. Furthermore, all twelve months in the Nolte Calendar are exactly alike. Each month has 5 weeks and 30 days; each month begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Sunday so that the weekend, incredibly enough, comes at the end of the week. Figure 1 shows the monthly calendar.

Reason

It doesn't take a Cosmic Systems Analyst to figure out that twelve such months account for only 360 days. For dignity's sake, the calendar reformer must resist the temptation to allocate the remaining five days to the five highest bidders. Thus, the Nolte Calendar won't include Chewing Tobacco Day, Bulldozer and Steamshovel Day, Cottage Cheese Sandwich Day, Abolish the Grizzly Bear Day nor the International Sneezing and Belching Festival.

The Nolte Calendar uses the extra days to mark the New Year and the seasons. The calendar year begins at the time of the winter solstice, on what is now December 22nd. This day is the New Year's Festival, an intercalary day for celebrating the new year. The following day is Tuesday, January 1st, not January 2nd.

After each 90-day quarter, there is a Festival, another intercalary day to proclaim the coming of a new season. Thus, the last day of the year is the Winter Festival, as well as New Year's Eve. During leap year, a Leap Year's Festival provides an additional holiday between the Summer Festival and the 1st of July. The four 90-day periods between Festivals correspond as closely as possible to the four seasons. Figure 2 shows the complete year.

Reason

Now comes the hard part. Let's assume we agree that 60 weekends per year is better than 52, that a long weekend every 3 months would be welcome, and that Monday and the five-day work week are obnoxious and obsolete, respectively. How do we go about replacing the old system with the new one?

Alas, Gregorian is no longer around to whip up a classy poem. Without a silvertongued sage to publicize it, the Nolte Calendar must rely on a word-of-mouth campaign of epic proportions.

In order to sweep the country and the civilized world with a "grass-roots" or "folk" movement for calendar reform, various gambits may be employed. An appeal to authority, for example, is always effective. Insinuate convincingly that this calendar was actually developed by one or more of the following impression-makers: Queen Elizabeth, Sam Ervin, Ralph Nader, Jackie Onassis, Dick Butkus, Ayn Rand, Betty Crocker, Bobby Sherman or even the Cosmic Systems Analyst himself.

The key is to be positive, never defensive. It's not enough to simply tell friends and acquaintances about the new calendar; they should be given to understand that the new calendar is practically an accomplished fact! It's also not enough to simply date all correspondence with the new date; those to whom such correspondence is sent must be made aware of their grievous mental and moral shortcomings if they have not yet adopted the new calendar. The conversion table, Figure 3, may be used to find the new date.

Reason

TO DETERMINE THE DATE IN THE NOLTE CALENDAR:

A. If the year is evenly divisible by 4, use the LEAP YEAR columns on the right, otherwise use the columns on the left.

B. Find the number in the OLD column for the month being converted, and add the day of the month to that number.

C. Look in the NEW column for the number Closest To and Less Than the result of B. Find and remember the month in the MONTH column which corresponds to this number. Subtract this number from the result of B.

D. The answer is the day of the month. If the answer is greater than 30, 31 is a Season Festival, 32 is New Year's Day or Leap Year's Day.

Using a calendar that is different from everyone else's calendar may prove personally rewarding, even if such action doesn't immediately earn all kinds of respect and admiration. Use of the Nolte Calendar will definitely aid in cultivating one's image as a lovable eccentric, engaged in a heroic crusade to answer the crucial question of our time: Is Monday really necessary?

For the optimist, one final question arises. What would happen if this new calendar actually catches on?

One hardly need start a calendar printing firm in anxious anticipation. Still, some thought might be given to reducing confusion during the transition from the old calendar to a new one. For example, the names of the months are a hopeless mishmash of Roman gods, goddesses, emperors, festivals, family names and wrong numeric prefixes. If both calendars were in use, the new calendar could use new names for the months and dispel any doubt as to which calendar is used in a particular instance.

The months could be named for the seasons: Earlywinter, Midwinter, Latewinter, Earlyspring, etc., or less prosaically: Winterdawn, Winternoon, Winterset, etc. Still, such names have all the glamour of a glass of warm milk. There's such a thing as being too systematic.

It might be better to use a set of twelve names which are already popular. Likely candidates would include the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, the Twelve Brightest Stars, the Twelve Boy Scout Virtues, the Twelve Danger Signals of Cancer, the Twelve Apostles in alphabetical order, the Twelve Deadly Sins (Avarice, Bigamy, Concupiscence, Dissipation, Envy, Flatulence, Gluttony, Halitosis, Intoxication, Jealousy, Kidnapping and Lust), or the ever-popular Dirty Dozen!

If one list of really glamorous names isn't quite long enough, a second list could be added to make a total of twelve. For example, the months could be named for Santa's Eight Reindeer and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, Gummo and the Seven Dwarfs; the Ten Commandments and the Everly Brothers; or even the Three Musketeers, the Three Stooges and the Six Fat Dutchmen.

Through a careful combination of cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers and obnoxious puns, the days of the week could be given an orderliness all their own:

1. Onesday
2. Twosday
3. Thirdsday
4. Quartsday
5. Fifthsday
6. Sexday

If the reader thinks this renaming crusade will be abandoned after a lousy list like that, he has another think coming. Since this is a folk calendar, the reader is invited to submit a better list. The best suggestion will win a copy of the 1974 Playmate Calendar, showing the now-obsolescent Gregorian system, along with some much more successful arrangements of figures.

Finally, in order that poor Gregorian not be forgotten, his immortal poem will be updated to suit the new calendar and, incidentally, make the damn thing rhyme after all these years:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November,
And all the rest up through December,
Now ain't that easy to remember?

Ned Nolte is a research analyst for Bankers Life Nebraska. He holds an A.B. in physics from Nebraska University, and has also spent time at Rice University and in the U.S. Navy. A member of the Society for Individual Liberty and the Libertarian Party, he has been a libertarian "for ages." He has previously published in the INDIVIDUALIST.