Our current Gregorian/Western calendar is too complicated for modern communication. Months are irregular, unconnected to weeks, and not divisible into fiscal quarters. It is unpredictable what day of the week any date will fall on in any given year. For all these reasons, and more, we need a new calendar.

Miklos Lente has created CalendarReform.org for this very reason, and is proposing a new "Global Calendar" (Proposal #1). This proposal seems to be one of the most sound ones online. For that reason, I am supporting his proposal by creating this site. Below you will find a javascript global calendar, discussion of the calendar design issues/decisions, suggested dates for American holidays in this new calendar, a calculator for converting dates between the Gregorian and Global calendars and discussion of implementing this new calendar.

Today is
{today's short global date}
{today's long global date}

¹ Solstice and Equinox dates are for the Northern Hemisphere (Mountain Standard Time) and are available only for years 1998 to 2010.

Issues/Decisions

The 7-day week fits the human endurance cycle very well and, unlike the month, is strongly ingrained into the rhythm of our lives. In fact, our activities are mostly organized around the week, and only to a lesser extent around the month. Furthermore, a number of religions give importance to the 7-day week, and would not be able to accept a different week length. For these reasons, any calendar without a 7-day week should not be considered.

What day should be the first day of the week? Obviously, it must be Sunday or Monday. In fact, the International Standards Organization, in ISO-8601, officially recognized Monday as the first day of the week in 1988. The major objection to this is from Christianity and Judaism, which clearly recognize Sunday as the first day of the week, and Saturday as the last (hence the Sabbath). No, Christians do not celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday. They worship on Sunday because that was the day of Christ's resurrection (See http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/rhodes-sabbath.html and http://www.christiananswers.net/q-acb/acb-t007.html). Consider also that:

Ignatius wrote in the early 100's A.D., describing Christians with a Jewish background as those who "have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in observance of the Lord's Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death" (Magnesians 9) [Editor's note: Magnesians is a letter written to the church at Magnesia by Ignatius, a church father, also called Theophorus.]

Even though Jews and Christians consider the first day to be Sunday, I think it is still appropriate to have Monday be the first day of the week, because it is just what you call the first day. I say this even though I am an Evangelical Christian.

The problem with months is that the month has nothing to do with the week. In the calendar, two unrelated time units are running alongside one another. That makes it very complicated and costly to plan activities. Since there are 365 days in a year (or 366 days in leap years), if we temporarily ignore one day a year (or 2 in leap years), then the number of days becomes exactly divisible by 7 giving exactly 52 weeks. If we then make months 4 weeks each, we will have 13 months. This is only one more than the current year. This works extremely well. One of the few drawbacks is that Fiscal Quarters do not line up with months. However, they do line up with weeks, which is more important. It would be very hard to come up with a month length that worked better given that there are 52 weeks in a year. So what happens to the days that we ignored? They become Blank Days, and are not considered to be part of any week nor to be a particular day of the week.

What should this new month be called and when should it be placed? It should be placed in the middle of the year, because this makes other months match up with their present seasons best. Given that the new month is mid-year between June and July, it has been suggested to call it Midy (abbreviated Mid.). This is a fine name suggesting both the mid-year, and fitting with many month names that end in "y". However, in my opinion, it does not really matter what it is named, and indeed, different cultures could give it different names, so long as they agree it is the seventh month.

Blank days are days which are not part of any week. They are also called intercalary days. Many reform calendars require a blank day each year (2 in leap years), or else resort to leap weeks to avoid them. A leap week is a whole week added to some years rather than a day like leap years in the Gregorian calendar. Blank days are preferable because they lead to a more regular year length and disrupt leap years less. Since given a day of the week, it is generally agreed that they should be international holidays. The two Blank Days in the Global calendar are New Year's Day and Leap Day. Again, these days are referred to by those names and are not assigned any day of the week. They correspond to January 0^th and December 29^th respectively.

Why does the year start on January 1^st at the particular time of winter that it does? This is due to various historical accidents. Originally, it was intended to start on the winter solstice (northern hemisphere) but over time it has shifted. It would be preferable for the year to start on or about the winter solstice each year. This would have the side effect of making Fiscal Quarters generally begin and end on the solstices and equinoxes. There would be some variance, but never more than about a day. This convention has been adopted for the Global Calendar appearing on this page. To achieve this, what is presently Dec. 22^nd must be Jan. 0^th in the Global Calendar.

Where should the Leap Day be inserted into the calendar? Presently, it is Feb. 29^th. However, placing it at the end of the year seems most logical, as it does not disrupt the correspondence of the rest of the days of the leap year with the seasons. Additionally, it seems to be a very sensible place for it, and would then make a two-day international holiday in leap years since it would immediately precede New Year's Day.

As mentioned in the discussion of months, one drawback of the Global calendar is that it's quarters do not line up with months. However, each quarter is exactly 13 weeks long, and they begin and end on the same date every year. Each quarter contains the same number of weeks, and consequently, the same number of each day of the week. In the Gregorian calendar this is not the case, and makes it difficult to compare quarters since more economic activity occurs on certain days of the week. There is the question of how New Year's Day and Leap Day fit into the quarters. It has been suggested that they simply be left out since not much economic activity will happen on those days. While this will most likely be done when making comparisons between quarters, it may be difficult for other things, such as earnings statements. For these purposes, New Year's Day may be included in Q1 and Leap Day in Q4. Ideally, they would simply be reported separately. Certainly, many companies will choose not to do business these days simply to avoid the issue.

How should one write dates in the Global Calendar? ISO-8601 provides an excellent standard that can be adapted. It has the benefit of being easy to write, listing calendar units from largest to smallest (as is done for time), and being generally not easily confused with other date formats. It is recommended that whenever a Global date is printed or stored in a computer, it should be written in this form. For handwritten dates, it can be shortened by omitting the leading zeros from the date parts. Sometimes it will be necessary to distinguish Global dates from Gregorian dates. For this purpose, it is suggested that a "G" or "N" for global or new be placed in front of the date ("N" is suggested since "G" is sometimes used to imply Gregorian as opposed to "J" for Julian). Finally, a radical new date format is also suggested. This may never be accepted, but should be considered. Dates could be written year:month:day. These would be distinguishable from times by the 4 digit year (which must always be padded with zeros to four digits to avoid confusion). One great advantage of this format is that it allows the writing of dates with times as 2004:07:10:15:20 (by joining the date with the military time by a colon). Below is a chart of various Global Dates written in each format.

Holidays

Note: the Solstices and Equinoxes are not shown below because they are astronomical events that vary slightly from year to year and time zone to time zone. However, they will always occur on or about the beginning and end of quarters.

Calculator

Implementation

Supporting the global calendar involves not just using it on papers and calendars but in computer software. To add in that endeavor the following resources are provided.

All date time code here can be used freely. Use at your own risk, I have attempted to insure it is correct but you should check yourself. In addition, some methods are not implemented. Please send bugs and code fixes to jwalker@cs.oberlin.edu.

Inherits from System.Calendar to describe the Global Calendar for use in the .NET internalization.

The GlobalDateTime structure is a substitute for the System.DateTime structure for developers who want to work natively in the global calendar. Some methods have yet to be implemented.

This file contains generic JavaScript for date handling. Used by JavaScript files below.

Provides an implementation of Gregorian calendar dates, but also of converting them to global calendar dates.

Provides an implementation of global calendar dates and converting them to Gregorian calendar dates.

jwalker@cs.oberlin.edu