The Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, was itself an attempt to address the problems of its predecessor, the Julian calendar, which had been introduced by Julius Caesar to abolish the use of the lunar year and eliminate a three-month gap that opened up between the civil and astronomical equinoxes.
This motivation is also why lunar calendars similar to the ones still used by Muslims fell out of favor somewhat - with 12 lunar cycles adding up to roughly 354 days, such systems quickly drift out of alignment with the seasons. The Egyptian calendar, for example, was established in part to predict the annual rising of the Nile River, which was critical to Egyptian agriculture. Historically, agricultural cycles, local climates, latitudes, tidal ebbs and flows and imperatives such as the need to anticipate seasonal change have shaped calendars.
How We Got HereĪt its core, the modern calendar is an attempt to track and predict the relationship between the sun and various regions of the earth. Geopolitical themes are present both in the creation of the Gregorian calendar and its permanence, and its ascendance and enduring primacy tells us much about the nature of the international system. Myriad geopolitical elements and obstacles are embedded in the issue of calendar reform, from the powerful historical role of empires and ecclesiastical authorities to the unifying forces of commerce and the divisive nature of sovereignty and state interests. According to the calendar's creators, it would generate more than $100 billion each year worldwide and "break the grip of the world-wide consensus that embraces a second-rate calendar imposed by a Pope over 400 years ago." This attempt, like many of the others, has received some media attention but has thus far failed to gain any meaningful traction with policymakers or the wider public. The Gregorian calendar's shortcomings are magnified by the fact that multiple improvements have been formulated, proposed to the public and then largely ignored over the years - most recently in 2012, with the unveiling of a highly rational streamlined calendar that addresses many of the Gregorian calendar's problems. In years where Christmas and New Year's Day each fall on a weekday, for example, economic productivity is essentially paralyzed for the better part of two weeks, and one British study found that moving a handful of national holidays to the weekend would boost the United Kingdom's gross domestic product by around 1 percent. They say the current system unnecessarily subjects businesses to numerous calendar-generated financial complications, confusion and reporting inconsistencies. Today, as we enter the 432nd year guided by the Gregorian calendar, reform advocates argue that the calendar's peculiarities and inaccuracies continue to do widespread damage each year. Attempts at improvements have sparked political turmoil and commercial chaos, and seemingly rational changes have consistently failed to take root. The history of calendrical reform has been shaped by the egos of emperors, disputes among churches, the insights of astronomers and mathematicians, and immutable geopolitical realities. In other words, the systems used by mankind to track, organize and manipulate time have often been arbitrary, uneven and disruptive, especially when designed poorly or foisted upon an unwilling society. The year 46 B.C., a year before Julius Caesar implemented his namesake system, lasted 445 days and later became known as the "final year of confusion."
Such calendrical acrobatics are not unusual. 14." Indeed, nearly two weeks evaporated into thin air in England when it transitioned from the Julian calendar, which had left the country 11 days behind much of Europe. When England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, some 170 years after it was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on Sept.