Hey, What Day is it today?
What day of the week is it today? What month? Do you know what time it is? These simple questions are actually answered very differently on different calendars in use today.
In the modern world, we are obsessed with calendars, agendas, clocks, watches. Many of us are always running late, always in a hurry. Hours go by, then days, weeks, years… the older you get, the faster time seems to go.
The English word calendar is derived from the Latin word kalendae, which was the Latin name of the first day of every month. Many different calendars have been developed over the millennia to help people organize their lives. According to a recent estimate, there are about forty calendars used in the world today, particularly for determining religious dates. Calendars are usually lunar, solar, or lunisolar, based on movements of the moon, sun, or both.
The calendar we measure our time with, which leads us to believe we are in the year 2009, is called the Gregorian Calendar. It was implemented by Pope Gregory XIII, and it uses the 12 month, seven day per week system. It replaced the Julian calendar abruptly in 1752, when people ‘lost’ 11 days, going reluctantly from Sept 2 to Sept 14 overnight. How would you feel if your birthday was in the deleted days that year?
The Islamic or Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar based on 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days, used to date events in many Muslim countries. The current Islamic year is 1430 AH, from approximately December 28, 2008 (evening) to December 17, 2009 (evening).
Its first year was the year during which the Hijra, i.e. the emigration of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, occurred. Each numbered year is designated either H for Hijra or AH for the Latin anno Hegirae (in the year of the Hijra). A limited number of years before Hijra (BH) are used to date events related to Islam, such as the birth of Muhammad in 53 BH.
Years in the Hebrew calendar are labeled with the era designation Anno Mundi (Latin for ‘in the year of the world’), abbreviated AM and A.M., and are numbered from the epoch that, by Rabbinical reckoning, is a year before the date of Creation. Early 2009 corresponds to Hebrew year 5769; the Hebrew year 5770 began at sundown on the evening of 18 September 2009.
The Indian national calendar (sometimes called Saka calendar) is the official civil calendar in use in India, in conjunction with the ‘standard’ Gregorian.
Scientists using reliable radiometric dating techniques on rocks tell us the earth is at least 4.5 billion years old. Bible scholars quote Bishop Ussher, who counted the generations in the Old Testament, made some adjustments, and decided the earth was 8,000 years old.
Either way, the idea that we are in the year 2009– when you really think about it– seems a bit of a fiction.
How Long Is a Week?
‘Seven days,’ you will tell me, looking at me as if I were an idiot. But historically, a week has varied greatly. The ancient Egyptians used a 10-day ‘week’, as did the French Revolutionary calendar. The Mayan calendar (pictured) which is making a comeback, uses a 13 and a 20-day ‘week’.
The Soviet Union used both a 5-day and a 6-day week. In 1929-30 the USSR gradually introduced a 5-day week. Every worker had one day off every week, but there was no fixed day of rest.
On 1 September 1931 this was replaced by a 6-day week with a fixed day of rest, falling on the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th, and 30th day of each month (1 March was used instead of the 30th day of February, and the last day of months with 31 days was considered an extra working day outside the normal 6-day week cycle). A return to the normal 7-day week was only decreed on 26 June 1940.
Lithuanians used a week of nine days before adopting Christianity.
The Babylonians marked time with lunar months. The major periods are seven days, quarter month, long. This seven-day period was later regularized and disassociated from the lunar month to become our seven-day week.
The early Romans, around the first century, used Saturday as the first day of the week. As the worshipping of the Sun increased, the Sun’s day (Sunday) advanced from position of the second day to the first day of the week (and Saturday became the seventh day).
The Mayan Calendar
Perhaps the most intriguing of all calendars is the Mayan calendar. We hear a lot about this calendar today because of its uncanny accuracy (it is far more precise than our calendar), the prophecies associated with it, and the fact that it ENDS in the Gregorian year 2012. The very best, if long, explanation of this calendar I have seen is by the late Ian Xel Lungold, and can be found on You Tube.
There is also a recent documentary film, ‘Between Two Worlds’, written and directed by José Jaramillo. He calls the Gregorian calendar “the greatest and most profoundly unquestioned instrument of control ever perpetrated upon the people of Earth.”
The Gregorian calendar suits the ‘old world’ (masquerading as the New World Order) of power, technology, and money, inhumane and useless, while the Mayan calendar shows a way to a ‘new world’ of peace, love, unity, and harmony. For Ramon Mendoza, an artist and philosopher, “the Mayan calendar is a textbook, it is a map, it is a way to know who we are.”
Jaramillo, who’s originally from Guadalajara but has roots in the Mayan Yucatan Peninsula, said that “reintroducing the Maya calendar is an emergency plan for people of Earth.”
The date December 21st, 2012 A.D. (13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count), represents an extremely close conjunction of the Winter Solstice Sun with the crossing point of the Galactic Equator (Equator of the Milky Way) and the Ecliptic (path of the Sun), what the ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree. This is an event that has been foreseen for thousands and thousands of years. It will come to resolution at exactly 11:11 am GMT.
Did the ancient Mayans see this date as the ‘end of the world’– or simply a point beyond which they could not see the future? Will it be earthly climactic catastrophe, or an opportunity for transformation? Perhaps the future from there really depends upon what the people alive in ‘2012’, do to change our relationship to this planet and to each other.