Day of the Timekeeper

 

Some thoughts and suggestions on using the Universal Solar Calendar:

• Like the Discordian Calendar, the USC divides the year into five seasons. Angus MacLise coined the seasons Childwinter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Hagwinter, but I prefer the names Vernal and Autumn to accord with the equinoxes.


• Each season has 73 days, except for Summer, which has 74. Childwinter had 72 days in MacLise's original version of the calendar, but an additional day, Fifth Twelve, can be added as the 60th day of the year, which would be February 29 in leap years in the Julian calendar, bringing the total number of days in Childwinter to 73.


• The Julian calendar counts weeks as seven-day increments, Sunday through Saturday. Since neither 365 days per year nor 366 days per leap year are evenly divisible by seven, years can begin and end on any day of the week. To make things simpler, I propose 6-day weeks so that each leap year has exactly 61 even weeks and each leap year begins and ends on the same day of the week. In non-leap years, the last day of Childwinter, the 73rd, can be skipped, and one goes directly from the 72nd day, the last day of the 12th week, to the first day of Vernal, which is the second day of the 13th week and the 74th day of the year. That way, every year, leap year or not, begins on the first day of the week and ends on the last day of the week. 


• The names of the days of the week in the Julian calendar derives from astronomy (Sun Day, Moon Day, Saturn Day), from mythology (Thor's Day), and from who-knows-what (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday). I propose that names for the six days of the week in the USC all be named for stars. Since it's a solar calendar, obviously one day should be named after our sun, Helios, and honorifically, it should be the last day, the grand finale of the week. As a mnemonic, I proposed the preceding days be named for stars in alphabetical order, specifically, Atlas, Betelgeuse, Castor, Deneb, and Electra, followed by Helios. You don't have to say "-day" after the names, just like you don't have to say "-month" at the end of "January." 


• For the working men and women out there, the six-day weeks can be considered to consist of four days of "labor" (Atlas through Deneb) and two days of "leisure" (Electra and Helios). You won't have three-day weekends (sorry), but you won't have five-day work weeks, either, and the skipped day on non-leap year Hagwinters is a labor day. Look at it this way: in six weeks of the current, Julian calendar, there are 30 Monday through Friday work days and 12 days off, but over those same 42 days in the USC, there are only 28 work days and 14 days off. You're welcome.  


• Each individual day of the year has a specific and unique name in the USC as originally coined by Angus MacLise. But since nobody has the time to memorize all 365 names, you can simply refer to the numerical day of the season, and the stellar name of the week. For example today, Saturday, the 2nd of November in the Julian calendar, is Atlas, the 14th of Hagwinter, Day of the Timekeeper.    


• So what year is it? This year is usually considered 2024 of the Common Era, sometimes called "Anno Domini" ("Year of the Lord"), although that system has a Christian bias. I don't deny the profound effect Christianity has had on world history over the past two millennia, but I don't think it's a good basis for chronology. In the late medieval period, many Christians thought the world was going to end in the year 1500 C.E., based on an interpretation of a passage in the Biblical book of Revelation that said the apocalypse was going to occur "half-time after the time." As the year 1500 approximates the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the modern period, I propose that 1500 be considered Year Zero for the USC. That would make it easy to convert historical dates from the C.E./A.D. system merely by subtracting 500, making this year, 2024, the year 524 USC. 


• The years before Year Zero back to the so-called Axial Age (circa 500 B.C.) can be considered the Judeo-Christian Common Era, and also have relevance to Hindus (the Upanishads were written around 500 B.C.) and to Buddhists (Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, lived and taught around 500 B.C.).


• As long as we're rewriting history here, the years prior to 500 B.C. can be considered the Vedic Era back to 1500 B.C., and before 1500 B.C., the pre-Vedic Era.

Sound complicated? It isn't. To help, here's a calendar for Hagwinter, 524:

So, enjoy your Atlas, the 14th of Hagwinter, Day of the Timekeeper, 524!