![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoWe've heard a lot of misguided nonsense about the Maya and their calendar over the past year. The end of the "long count" is just a cyclical event after which a new count begins. The calendars familiar to Central American scholars consist of multiple cycles of varying length, each of which simply repeats itself when it runs out. Thus the thirteenth long count began on or about the winter solstice of 2012. (Technically, it's the fourteenth b'akt'un since the first one was "zero," but by convention the repeating long counts are numbered in that way.) Anyway, the world didn't end on December 21. Instead, we just flip the long count back to the beginning and start over, just as we do with January 1 of each year in the common Gregorian calendar.
A similar occasion for our own calendar took place on January 1, 2000, when the collapse of civilization was predicted by some based on the notion that computer software would get confused about dates with the beginning of a new century. This was equally misguided, and very little happened related to that change. Furthermore, the actual 21st century didn't begin until January 1, 2001, since there is no year zero in the Gregorian system.
Recycling calendars is a practice we have picked up here at the farm, not out of miserliness, but because we save wall calendars that have particularly attractive pictures on them. The Gregorian calendar has repeating cycles too, just as the Mayan or Aztec calendars do, but the pattern of repeats is more complicated (at least to my way of thinking.) A little investigation, however, shows that the pattern of weekdays and dates for 2013 matches exactly with 2002, 1991, and 1985, as well as many earlier years. Our collection of favorite old calendars only goes back to about 1984, so those are the three years of greatest interest. Though we did get two new wall calendars this year (one with puppies, one with wolves) we normally use four at various locations in the house. This morning we sorted through the old calendars and pulled out two from 2002. One of those is the Workman Teddy Bear calendar from 2002, and the other is a calendar with photos of sheep breeds from the same year.
Phases of the moon, if indicated, on such recycled calendars are almost never correct. The dates for Easter and Ash Wednesday are usually wrong. Other fixed holidays and civil holidays that are moved to the nearest Monday are normally correct. We use a lunar astronomical calendar for moon phases anyway and disregard the approximations shown on wall calendars, so this is not a big issue. It's fun to revisit favorite calendar photos of years past, and our collection of 30 or 40 some old ones takes up little space on a bookshelf.
A similar occasion for our own calendar took place on January 1, 2000, when the collapse of civilization was predicted by some based on the notion that computer software would get confused about dates with the beginning of a new century. This was equally misguided, and very little happened related to that change. Furthermore, the actual 21st century didn't begin until January 1, 2001, since there is no year zero in the Gregorian system.
Recycling calendars is a practice we have picked up here at the farm, not out of miserliness, but because we save wall calendars that have particularly attractive pictures on them. The Gregorian calendar has repeating cycles too, just as the Mayan or Aztec calendars do, but the pattern of repeats is more complicated (at least to my way of thinking.) A little investigation, however, shows that the pattern of weekdays and dates for 2013 matches exactly with 2002, 1991, and 1985, as well as many earlier years. Our collection of favorite old calendars only goes back to about 1984, so those are the three years of greatest interest. Though we did get two new wall calendars this year (one with puppies, one with wolves) we normally use four at various locations in the house. This morning we sorted through the old calendars and pulled out two from 2002. One of those is the Workman Teddy Bear calendar from 2002, and the other is a calendar with photos of sheep breeds from the same year.
Phases of the moon, if indicated, on such recycled calendars are almost never correct. The dates for Easter and Ash Wednesday are usually wrong. Other fixed holidays and civil holidays that are moved to the nearest Monday are normally correct. We use a lunar astronomical calendar for moon phases anyway and disregard the approximations shown on wall calendars, so this is not a big issue. It's fun to revisit favorite calendar photos of years past, and our collection of 30 or 40 some old ones takes up little space on a bookshelf.
