Last
week I told the story about the
Reader’s Digest editions
I received, a present sent by
Nathércio França.
I told of the long wait I had
for them to arrive and of the
pure joy I felt at finally having
them in my anxious hands, and
the pleasure I still have in reading
them. Today, I continue to take
advantage of them, at the moment
I am browsing through some from
November 1945, researching information
which would be helpful in my essay
about the calendar. A little history
and a proposal of change, to help
our lives become a little more
orderly in terms of weeks and
months. Don’t be alarmed;
my friend…at the present
moment, no known government is
concerned about these things.
All are much more involved about
how much money they owe and to
whom they owe it, and also about
rising taxes and tax evasion.
The
name calendar comes from the latin
“calendas”, which
represented the first day of each
month in ancient Rome. There have
been countless ways of measuring
time through history, each nation
having their own method of organizing
the weeks, months and years. And
so…pre-history calendars
began to appear. The Hebrew, Chinese,
Mayan, Armenian, Egyptian, Hindu,
Moslem, Roman, Aztec and, who
knows, perhaps even a Brazilian
calendar, back when our native
Indian population, the Tupi-Guanany
nation, measured the passing of
time by counting the phases of
the moon. It was always such an
absurd mixture of criteria, calculated
in such a way, that an airplane
which left London on the 5 of
January, 1939 and arrived in Belgrade,
in Yugoslavia on the same day
but on a date designated as of
December 23, 1933. If an airplane
flies very quickly and arrives
in Japan in only 5 hours, it would
end up arriving yesterday! It’s
so crazy that no one can understand
it. For example, Easter can fall
on any Sunday from March 22 and
April 25, and Christmas always
falls on the same day, December
25. Take note that Holy Friday
is always on a Friday but never
on the same day of the month.
Mathematicians, in doing their
calculations, see that there are
no three trimesters of exactly
the same number of days. They
always have 90, 91, 92 or 93 days.
This is because 30 days have September,
April, June and November. February
has 28, and all the rest have
31. In this poetic manner, it’s
very confusing to calculate mediums
and make statistics. The Orthodox
Jews, even until today, use the
lunar calendar and synchronize
their seasons, injecting an extra
month every two or three years
in passing. The first Romans lived
under a year of only ten months,
or, if you please, 304 days. This
continued until Numa Pompilio,
in the seventh century B.C., added
the months of January and February.
But, all this made dates so uncertain
that the high priests resorted
to habitually cutting them down
time-wise when their adversaries
were in power and would then stretch
them out to please their favorites…
The Egyptians, on studying the
shadows cast by the pyramids,
created the year of 365 days and
eight hours, having twelve months
of thirty days each and five extra
days reserved for celebrations,
and besides all this, they even
had a leap-year every five years.
On the other hand, the Aztecs
had a year consisting of eighteen
months and twenty days, and the
remaining days reserved for festive
days or for bad days which they
referred to as “nefastos”.
In
an attempt to uniform time, the
system was then adapted to the
Roman world, when Julio Cesar
decreed that the year 46 B.C.
be stretched to 445 days, so that
it would be synchronized to the
sun. Due to the numerous superstitions
regarding odd numbered days, the
five extra days saved for celebrations
were promptly distributed among
the months. One day was subtracted
from “Februarius”
and given to “Quintilis”,
which later was renamed “Julius”,
in honor of himself, creator of
this calendar. Cutting the year
down further yet, a second amputation
was perpetrated against “Februarius”,
for Augusto, who summed this day
to his birth month, August. It
was only in the year 325 A.C.
that the council of Nicea established
the week consisting of seven days,
independent of the number of months
and years, strong enough to walk
on its own legs, if a week could
have legs, of course. It was in
1852 that Pope Gregorio corrected
Cesar’s astronomy, ordering
that three leap-year days be stricken
from the calendar every four centuries.
And here is a novelty, if a world
year calendar was developed, each
one would be doted with thirteen
months, each week starting on
Sunday and ending every Saturday.
The 365th day would be extra and
be called the last day of the
year. That would then be a great
disadvantage for us Brazilians:
Christmas and New Years would
always fall on the week-end. We
would lose our much cherished
extended holidays.
