Burn The Calendar

Deputy Editor Kayleigh Greig redesigns time-keeping with a proposal of the 13-month Phoenix Calendar.

With this issue’s Phoenix theme in mind, I recently discovered an ageing system that is desperately in need of rebirth: the Gregorian Calendar. I happened upon a YouTube video titled “Why the Calendar Makes ZERO Sense” in which the comedian Dave Gorman breaks up the problems of the archaic system that we’ve been using since the 1500s:

• 365 days is a gross number that doesn’t divide well, so we’ve ended up with a weird jumble of months spanning 28-31 days that leaves us counting our knuckles to figure out which is which.

• Because the months are different lengths, it complicates a lot of financial processes, forcing many of us to pay weekly rent when it would be so much easier to pay monthly. 

• Because 365 can’t be divided by 7, the weeks roll over into the next year so that the first of January and all subsequent dates are on different days of the week every year.

• Certain holidays such as ones that take place on every second Sunday of the month must be recalculated each year because they occur on a different date.

• This means that we have to make new calendars on an annual basis, wasting paper, money and time.

So, Gorman presents an alternative: 

First, let’s take away that pesky 365th day that makes everything so indivisible; we’ll deal with it later. 

That leaves us with 364 days that can be perfectly divided into 13 months of 28 days – yep, 13 months instead of 12. 

To make it clear, that’s:

• 1 year of 364 days.

• 13 months of 28 days.

• 4 perfect weeks in each month, making exactly 52 weeks a year. 

• 7 days a week, as usual. 

To get really revolutionary, I would make only 4 days of the week working days, leaving one day for chores (because I don’t know about you, but I struggle to squeeze laundry, dishes, vacuuming and all the rest into my work schedule), one day for fun with friends and one to actually relax. 

To illustrate:

• Sunday = rest, the first day of the week

• Monday & Tuesday = work

• Wednesday = chores

• Thursday & Friday = work

• Saturday = rest

This way, the seventh day of the week can be Saturday so that religious folks can observe Sabbath Day, and it makes the week a perfect, symmetrical sandwich of work and rest.

Lovely! In this format, a particular date will be the same day of the week every year. New Year’s Day will always be Sunday since that’s the first day of the week, and because, as Gorman points out, no one wants to go back to work right away. 

Now let’s bring that extra day back in, because it takes 365 days and 6 hours for the earth to orbit the sun and that’s not something we can change. Gorman suggests simply having an “Intermission Day” that isn’t a day of the week, it’s just Intermission. Every few years, there would be two Intermission days, like a leap year, and both would be Intermission.

Personally, I can see some folks having a problem with this, since it may mess up financial payments and it would corrupt the Sabbath schedule. I’d also rather make the inconsistency less regular so I wouldn’t have to go every year wondering whether it was a one- or two-day intermission. Instead, I’d simply add an entire week every 5 or 6 years. This extra week wouldn’t be a working week – instead, it could be the week that extends our holidays long enough for bigger travelling trips. For me, knowing that I’d be having an extra long holiday a few years away would help me budget and choose when to have my splurge vacations instead of being tempted into them more regularly. I like the idea of “Intermission” so I’d keep its name as Intermission Week instead of trying to tack it onto some other month. Dates for this week could be indicated with ‘I’ such as 2/I/2025.

OK, now that we’ve nicely divided everything timewise, you may be asking what I’m going to name this thirteenth month?

Well, Gorman humorously criticises the Romans for naming the months July and August after people, only to name the thirteenth month after himself. He points out the inconsistencies with the month names since prefixes such as sept, oct, nov and dec translate to 7, 8, 9 and 10. However, September, October, November and December are the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th months of the year. Instead, he proposes moving them to their correct places, bringing back Quintilis and Sextilis, which the Romans replaced with August and July, and then simply moving January and February to the 11th and 12th spot, followed by Gormanuary. 

This way, the year would start in March, as it actually used to, creating a calendar that looks like this:

1. March

2. April

3. May

4. June

5. Quintilis

6. Sextilis

7. September

8. October

9. November

10. December

11. January 

12. February 

13. Gormanuary

However, I can see a few things I’d like to improve about this calendar:

• Transitioning would be extremely confusing as January in some parts of the world would be completely different to January in other parts of the world, so why not rename all the months and start afresh? 

• Why have only some numerically named months? Giving all numerical prefixes would help us remember their order.

• Some of the months start with the same letter. I don’t know about you, but I always get June and July mixed up for exactly that reason, so I’d like to make all the months different. This way with dates, we could write 11/M/25 instead of 11/1/25, which could be either the 11th day of the first month or the eleventh month on its first day, depending on which format your country uses.

So, for my own calendar – let’s call it the Phoenix Calendar, for ease – I would take inspiration from theses Greek prefixes:

1. Mono

2. Di

3. Tri

4. Tetra

5. Penta

6. Hexa 

7. Hepta

8. Octa 

9. Ennea

10. Deca

11. Hendeca

12. Dodeca

13. Triskaideca

But, to avoid repeating first letters, I would adjust them fairly liberally to name the thirteen months like so: 

1. Monus

2. Bius

3. Tertius

4. Quartuses

5. Pentes

6. Hexes

7. Septesas

8. Octas

9. Enneas

10. Decasos

11. Udos

12. Zodos

13. Kaidos

Where each suffix relates to a season:

• Spring = us

• Summer = es

• Autumn = as

• Winter = os

You may notice that some months have two suffixes, because unfortunately thirteen doesn’t divide perfectly into four, so the fourth, seventh and tenth month contain a season transition. This is the one thing about the Phoenix Calendar that is less ideal, but the first day of a new season doesn’t affect us as much as the first day of a new week or month, so I’m happy to let it be. In any case, the transitions should happen on the same days every year, so we’ll memorise the dates pretty quickly.

You might have also picked up on the fact that I’ve decided to start with Spring. Yep, it makes no sense to start the year a third of the way into Summer and a whole lot more sense to start the new year in the growing season, at the time of new life. I also feel that New Year’s Eve will hit so much harder when we know we’re escaping the clutches of Winter and finally heading towards warmth – or at least, that’s how the people in the Northern Hemisphere will feel. I’ve decided to be kind and make it the start of their Spring, since ninety percent of the human population lives there. I know it’s not as great for us down under, but we’re cool and generous like that. 

So, there you go! That’s the complete Phoenix Calendar of thirteen appropriately-named 28-day months and the occasional extra week every five or six years. Every date is the same day of the week and the year starts at the beginning of the North’s Spring and the South’s Autumn. 

I’d be super keen to see if anyone has feedback for my system, so feel free to send comments to my email: kayleigh.greig@students.mq.edu.au, just in case I ever get to take over the world and put this calendar in place.