Let’s Make Leap Day a Leap Week: Here’s How
What if we could increase productivity, have more time off, and have complete symetry in our calendar? Here’s how we can do it.
I posed a question on Facebook questions a number of years ago: Why do we have 12 months in a year? It was and continues to be strange to me that, seemingly arbitrarily, we had 12 months every year with a varying number of days in each. Who said it had to be this way?
Ignoring the miniscule effects of traveling at or near the speed of light and the relative effect of speed and acceleration as observed by the expanding universe or even us as we hurdle through space, time to us humans on earth is constant. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and it requires 24 hours for the earth to rotate one full time (in relation to the sun).
This could have been arbitrary, if we had not used quartz as our standard for measuring time. Easy to find and cheap to produce, quartz creates a signal with a very specific and accurate frequency when an electric oscillator is applied, making it a perfect standard.
We could have as easily picked a different gem, which would give a different frequency and, hence a different time measure. This would be great if it cuts a few seconds from my 100M dash, but that aside, we can just accept quartz.
Even without quartz, we and our ancestors know that the earth will rotate on its axis approximately 365 times in one full rotation around the sun. We now know (thank you, science) that the exact number is 365.242199, which is why we add one extra day every four years.
And, since it is NOT precisely one quarter of a day, we also need to add another day every 500 years or so.
All of this makes it easy to understand that no gem or measuring strategy changes the fact that we will always have to adjust our days every four years.
So my question: What is the scientific reason for having 12 months each year, and why is the start of every year, January 1, on the day (position in the path around the sun) that it does?
As it turns out, there is no scientific reason.
One explanation is that there were originally 10 months in the year, because ancients liked the ability to use 10 (number of fingers … farming accidents aside) in their counting, and hence created 10 months. This would explain why months of Septem(7)ber, Octo(8)ber, Novem(9)ber, and Decem(10)ber have Latin-based numeric names.
One rumor has it that during the Roman Empire, Augustus felt left out and created a month in honor of himself (August) and another after his uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar (July). For whatever reason, to compensate for this, he took more days from February to fill the new months.
Interestingly, there is a more modern example of this renaming months of the year by now-deceased Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov, who changed the names of the months and days after himself and his family. Obviously that didn’t stick, as we aren’t living in the month of Baýdak.
At least he didn’t add or subtract days or months.
A more compelling reason for our current set up, and one probably held closely by the ancients as well, is based around lunar days, or days between full moon cycles. Originally, our two-legged predecessors didn’t have electric oscillators and quartz, or at least hadn’t put the two together, so the easiest thing for everyone to use was the second most visible celestial body, the moon.
At 29.5 lunar days, that creates about 12.4 lunar cycles in a year. Round a bit, add a few days, tweak every year and, wham, you’ve got 12 months. Of course this still doesn’t explain the differing number of days every month. Ugh, where’s my symmetry?
Regardless of how you look at it, I think it’s time for a change. With science and technology, there is no reason we need to stick to this arbitrary method of date keeping. Instead, we should consider a calendar that is much easier and convenient for all!
Here are my suggestions:
8 Month and 8 Day/Week
Use an 8 month and 8 day/week calendar. This would result in 45 days in each month, 45 weeks in each year. Nice and simple.
Rejoice Week
At the end of the year, the remaining five days (the 46th “week” of the year) would be recognized as a 5-day “rejoicing week,” where we all take time off, remember and appreciate the previous year, and get psyched for the following year.
The rest of the world takes an entire week off for New Years, why don’t we?
New Seasonal Markers
The first day of every other month would mark the beginning of a new season and make each season exactly 2 months long. Given the actual equinoxes vary from year to year anyway, this method would be perfectly acceptable.
New January 1
The first day of each calendard year would be the first day of spring. (i.e. January 1 would fall on the Spring equinox, currently on or around March 20). It’s commonly celebrated as the beginning of the harvest season, and often called “new birth”. What not a better day to start a new year??
New Work Week
Work weeks would increase to 10 hours per day for five days (50 hours total), but we would observe 3-day weekends every week.
This would increase work hours from 2,080 to 2,250 hours per year but in return would actually increase our relaxation days from 104 to 140, excluding observed holidays.
This, I would argue, would increase productivity as well, because let’s face it, who really gets enough rest with a two day weekend? (I’m still trying to figure out what happened to Saturday!)
Holidays
Of course, all major holidays would have to be realigned in the new calendar, but that should be too much of an issue to determine.
Rejoice Leap Week
And because no amount of shuffling the calendar will eliminate the additional 0.242199 days we experience each year, we can simply extend Recjoice Week every four years, making this special week 6 days long! And again, every 500 years, we’d have TWO additional Rejoice Week days!
In the end, we would have symmetry and meaning behind our days. With more time off on the weekends, people would consume, travel and vacation more, and now, a week long vacation goes from 9 to 11 days (including the weekends)!
More consumption, happier people, and economic bliss. Who could argue that?
Of course, those who have religious reasons for leaving Sunday right where it’s at will oppose, not to mention the numerous other world calendars I have to contend with.
And, let’s not forget calendar manufactures and, of course, calendar models. Imagine the poor souls who would be burdened with the difficult decision of which 4 firemen models would need to be cut?
Ugh, and imagine the uprising from young teenage girls around the world with a vendetta for cutting their locker calendars by 4 months! Sorry, you only get 8 Timothée Chalamet months.
Regardless, it’s nice to think about. I, for one, already have my next several 3-day weekends planned, so let’s get on implementing. I guess the logical next question is: what do we name the eighth day of the week? I suppose I could take a page out of Turkmenbashi’s and Augusta’s strategy … happy Peteday everyone?
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This is an updated version of a post I made on my blog back when Blogger was still cool. #TBT.
