My Century Calendar

A more simple stab at revising the calendar . .

Adopt the Zodiac Calendar

We already have a highly celestial-oriented calendar in the Zodiac. This has little to do with actual astrology and its supposed impact on human behavior and destiny. It just would be nice not to have TWO calendars in operation (you know you check the zodiac dates all the time) and to have our birth dates coordinated directly to sun signs.

Change Month Names

Month names now mean a polyglot of things, all relayed to us through impenetrable language. Ancient gods and goddesses--January=Janus, Mars=Mars, May=Maia, June=Juno--but could you tell, and do you care? How about a Roman festival--February=februa, the Roman festival of purification. Is this important in your life? Could you get the meaning from the name? We have one month whose name is of uncertain origin: April.

Roman ordinal numbers make up four months--September=7th, October=8th, November=9th, December=10th--which was all the months they had at the time. Two Roman emperors named a month for themselves: July=Julius Caesar, August=Augustus Caesar. Are Roman emperors so important to us now that they should still be naming our months?

By using zodiacal constellation names in the proposed 'Century Calendar' this polyglot of etymology is replaced with meaningful celestial formations everyone already knows. This also deals directly with a major issue with the current month configuration: lack of direct coordination with the solar cycle, i.e., solstices and equinoxes.

December 22=CAPRICORN 1
January 20=AQUARIUS 1
February 19=PISCES 1
March 21=ARIES 1
April 20=TAURUS 1
May 21=GEMINI 1
June 21=CANCER 1
July 23=LEO 1
August 23=VIRGO 1
September 23=LIBRA 1
October 23=SCORPIO 1
November 22=SAGITTARIUS 1

Change Weekday Names

Weekdays now come from the names of Anglo-Saxon deities. Sunday is easy enough, so to for Monday, but the rest? Could you tell what God Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were named for? Do you care?

Let's change all that by naming them clearly in English what we could get from their names in the Romance languages (if we spoke them):

Sunday='SUN DAY'
Monday='MOON DAY'
Tuesday='MARS DAY'
Wednesday='MERCURY DAY'
Thursday='JUPITER DAY'
Friday='VENUS DAY'
Saturday='SATURN DAY'

Add More Holidays

Spacer weekend days would be added to make Moon Day fall on every half moon and full moon, meaning alternating seven- and eight-day weeks. The spacer day would be called a PHASE DAY.

Use of zodiac months would keep the calendar keyed to the solstices and equinoxes, with two-week holidays centered around each solstice, Winter and Summer, and a one-week holiday around each equinox, Spring and Fall.

Restart the Years

As for the first year, something ominous, but highly meaningful to all: the beginning of the Atomic Age: 1945. So we are now in year 62.

(See Century Calendar: Reconciling Cycles for an update on this concept)