Why the Western World Uses an Awkward Calendar

Many have attempted to change the calendar in common use, due to peculiarities that complicate trade and commerce. Yet through all attempts to alter the calendar, God has seen to it that the seven-day week cycle was preserved.

by Paul Kieffer

In a memorandum to the United Nations in 1953, the Indian UN ambassador proposed the adoption of a new calendar to replace the Gregorian calendar, which is used worldwide to provide a common time reference for conducting business in today's world. In explaining the reason for the proposal, the ambassador listed the facts that months, quarters and half years are of unequal lengths on the Gregorian calendar.

These factors skew business statistical analyses. And they can cause the number of working days in a given month to vary from year to year.

The ambassador wrote: "The greatest drawback from a statistical and commercial point of view is that, since the various days of the week are not of the same value as regards volume of trade, and the years and the months do not from year to year include the same number of individual weekdays, there can be no genuine statistical comparison between one year and another, while the various subdivisions of the year itself—the half years, quarters and months—are likewise incapable of comparison" ("Memorandum to the United Nations Economic and Social Council," Document E/2514, Oct. 30, 1953).

Other criticisms of the Gregorian calendar include its adherence to a solar cycle, which produces a "unique" calendar from year to year. This means that a given date will vary from one year to the next: July 4 will be a weekday most years but can also fall on the weekend in some years. A given day of the month will not be the same weekday the next year, nor will a weekday in a given week of the year have the same calendar date as the previous year. Months and the year cannot be divided into an exact number of weeks. The exact reproduction of the calendar for any given year will take place only once every 28 years.

The asymmetrical Gregorian calendar, with its origins dating back to a prescientific age some 2,000 years ago, does seem to be an anachronism in today's technological world. For decades, proponents of calendar reform have advocated the adoption of a new calendar.

Read the full article at www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0406/awkwardcalendar.htm

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