Re-evaluating our calendar system

Yes, the basic calendar: January, February, etc...

We've been using the Gregorian calendar since October 15, 1582. Most people just accept that it's how the calendar is and never give a second thought to how it could be improved. Well, I'm not most people (ok, quit laughing).

There are some features of the calendar that we're forced to accept so let's start with those:

• The length of a year is determined by Earth's orbit around the Sun.
• The length of a day is determined by Earth's rotation on its axis.
• Dividing one by the other gives about 365.2425 days per year.
• Because there aren't a whole number of days per year, we need some sort of leap year system.

Ok, so what features are left that we can change? Well, there's days per week, months per year, hours per day, minutes, seconds... enough variables to have some fun.

Let's look at a simple example of what's wrong with our calendar. Ask your friends what day of the week they were born on. Do you expect any of them will know the answer? Do you know?

Here's another problem: anything you pay for by the month (cell phone, cable TV, car, house, etc) costs you 10% more per day in February than January.

I'm proposing a new calendar system. Replace the 400 year old Gregorian calendar. We can't go totally metric (bound by the 365.2425 days/year), but we can make all the months be the same length. Not to be too disruptive, let's keep a week as 7 days, but make a month be 28 days. Every month. It would require 13 months to make a full year so we'll have to name the new one something, maybe "Triscadecember". While we're at it, fix the names of September, October, November and December (they should rightfully be months 7, 8, 9 and 10). Doing that, we get a few interesting properties:

• Every month is exactly 4 weeks, calendars become reusable.
  
• The first of every month is always a Sunday, easy to remember.
  
• Every American holiday (except Easter) will always be on the same date and the same day of the week from year to year.
• There will never be a blue moon :(
• The 13th will always be a Friday (I'm not superstitious, are you?)
  

Ok, but there's still a few things to work out. Since 13 months of 28 days is only 364, we need one extra day. Let's call that day New Year's Eve. It's a very special day. Since New Year's isn't affiliated with any religion or culture (ok, some cultures do still have their own calendars, but the point is New Year's isn't exclusionary) we're able to give it special status without offending any of the overly sensitive freaks. The special dispensation we make for New Year's Eve is that it's not part of any month, nor is it even a day of the week... it's simply called New Year's Eve and falls between Saturday, Triscadecember 28th and Sunday, January 1st.

Leap years would still occur in the same years that they do now (having to deal with that extra 0.2425 days per year). So we'd have an extra day to stuff into the calendar. The only way to avoid the nice balance we've achieved is to give Leap Day the same special dispensation as New Year's Eve. So the year 2008 would end with Saturday, Triscadecember 28th, then Leap Day, New Year's Eve and then Sunday, January 1st 2009.

Such a system does have its drawbacks. People born on a Wednesday would never have their birthday fall on a weekend. But most perceived problems are just differences. Date books, software, etc would need to be updated, but accounting for New Year's Eve not being a day of the week is trivial compared to dealing with the mess we're in now.

But in the end, it's the transition that's hard, not using the system. Much as we've learned from the metric system: once everyone's using it, things are much easier. Convincing America to change even though the rest of the world already has still seems to be impossible :(