Steve H. Hanke: It’s Time to Change the Calendar, Once and for All
2019-01-08 IMI
The HHPC offers a comprehensive template for revising the contemporary Gregorian calendar. It adheres to the most basic tenet of a fixed calendar: every date would fall on the same day of the week every year. So, New Year’s Day would always be a Monday. The year would be divided into four three-month quarters. The first two months of each quarter would be made up of 30 days; the third would have 31 days. So, each quarter contains 91 days resulting in a 364-day year comprised of 52 seven-day weeks. This is a vital feature of the HHPC: by preserving the seven-day Sabbath cycle — and so not inserting “extra days” that break up the weekly cycle — it would avoid the major complaints from ecclesiastical quarters that have doomed all other attempts at calendar reform.
There would be a disparity between the necessary length of our calendar (364 days) and that of the astronomical calendar (365.24 days). The HHPC would account for this by tacking an additional week on to every fifth or sixth year. So, there would be an extra seven days added to the calendar in, for example, 2020, 2026, 2032, and so on. This additional week would serve the same purpose as the extra day we count in a leap year in the present system and keep the calendar in line with the seasons.
The introduction of the HHPC will create some transition costs. It’s what I call “Niagara Falls Transition Troubles”. When asked to describe his experience of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, the somewhat dazed daredevil said, “above and below the falls, it was calm, but the transition was a bitch.” Yes, transitions can be difficult, especially when it comes to something as ingrained as our conception of time. For example, and contrary to popular belief, when Pope Gregory XIII mandated the imposition of the Gregorian calendar, the transition was not immediate.
The story of George Washington’s birthday sheds light on just how long the transition actually took. The typical American calendar has February 22nd as the official birthday of the nation’s first president, but the Washington family Bible points to a different date. The actual date was recorded as “ye 11th day of February 1731/32.” The difference reflects the hesitant nature of the British colonies to accept the reformed calendar of Pope Gregory XIII. As a result of the decision to use the calendar system of Julius Caesar, Britain and its colonies were literally “behind the times.”
However, after many years of rejection, Britain and its colonies accepted the Gregorian calendar, in 1752 — admitting that their system needed to be changed. It was not until the 20th century that Russia and several other countries also finally abandoned the Julian calendar. This explains why the October Revolution of 1917 really took place on November 7th. These historical anecdotes show that calendar systems do expire, and eventually new calendar systems are accepted.
There is no reason why calendrical change cannot occur more quickly today. In the past, new calendars have been mandated by emperors, like Julius Caesar, and ecclesiastical authorities, like Pope Gregory XIII, and so forth. Today we have social media. If the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar goes viral, and that might just do the trick, it would break the grip of the world-wide consensus that embraces a second-rate calendar imposed by a Pope over 400 years ago.
