CALENDAR REFORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 62, 15 March 1938, Page 6

CALENDAR REFORM.

CORRECTING THE SEASONS

A scheme for the reform of tbe calendar put forward every now and again shows the prevailing discontent witli the present nearly |>erfocted usajre. and the proposals made by the World Calendar Association seem certainly (he best for introducing permanent regularity. Only one minor point suggests itself. There may possibly be some reason for 'having the first month -in each quarter contain 31 days, but unless this is so the sequence 30. 30. 31. putting the 91st day at the end, would be better. But surely the regularising of the calendar is a small matter compared with the correction of the year itself and its seasons. Why not do the whole thing at once? . By the method outlined in the association's scheme an opportunity for reform of the calendar only occurs on January 1, next year, wllieh falls on a Sunday. This is much too close; agreement can scarcely be reached before then. And the next opportunity is not until ISKiO.

But why should the year bejrin where it does, ten days after the winter solstice— nowhere in particular? If it began at the winter solstice, a definite point, little objection might be raised; only that then the seasons would not fall within it. A scheme for both the correction of the seasons and the rejularisation of the calendar, shown in the following, would be available in 1944 (and again in 1940).

Take a piece of foolscap or quarto paper and dra\y upon it a. circle with the diameter of an ordinary cheese plate. Draw a line bisecting the circle horizontally as the equator. At the left-hand end of this line put the date. March 21. and at the right-hand end the date September 22. The scheme is viewed as from the northern hemisphere, and these dates are the sprinjr and the autumn equinoxes respectively. At the top of an imaginary line, bisecting the circle at right angles to the "equator,'' put the date June 22, and at the bottom December 21, respectively midsummer and midwinter.

Now from midwinter to the left, half way towards the spring equinox, count 46 days, with an undated day for either Christmas or New Year. The date arrived at will be February 0. From that point draw an upward diagonal diameter to a point half way between midsummer and the autumn equinox. This will be August 7. Now draw another diameter at right angles to this. The points on the circle will be Mav S and November 0.

The circle is now quartered in saltire. For the northern hemisphere, in the left-hand lith. across the equator, write spring, in the top lith summer, in the right-hand lith, again across, the equator, autumn, and in the bottom lith winter. The first day of spring, February 6, which is a Sunday in 1944, is the beginning of the natural year.

But. though the year <lid at one time begin on Lady Day, March 25, any date but the first of the month would be very inconvenient. It is proposed, however, not that February C should be called the first of that month, but March 1. There are two very good reasons for this. First, the months of September, October, November and December will then come in correctly as the 7th, Bth, !)th and 10th months. Secondly, the winter solstice, when the sun faces round to come north again, will then fall in the middle of January, the month named after the Roman god Janus, who faced both ways. The equinoxes will be in the middle (16th) of the middle months of spring and autumn and Midsummer Day in the middle of the middle month of summer. Each quarter coincides with a season, begins on a Sunday and has the dates of its months arranged 30. 30. 31, as in the association's (scheme. New Years Day (or Christmas Day) and Leap Year Day (wherever it be intercalated) will have 7io dates. The year, the seasons and the calendar will then remain regular and correct for all time—or at least for over 3000 years, when an alteration of one day has to he made. In any method of date regnlarisation many people would be wishing to alter the dates of their birthday*! to keep the year the proper length—not to mention many somewhat more important alterations. But under the al>ove full scheme apologies and sympathy would have to be offered to those born at the beginning of the year, the dates of whose birth would have to be stated like that of the beheading of Charles T. —January, 16-18-49. The writer is one of them. —RUTHERFOORD LEE.