The Calendar - A Brief History

Our lives are planned out by the movements of the earth, sun and moon, these are the basic movements on which a calendar is based. As humans grow in understanding the format of a calendar has progressed, meaning the calendar has history dating back numerous years.







The universally accepted calendar of today is the Gregorian calendar. It's been widely used for hundreds of years, and in today’s world we count a lot on physical formations of the calendar to be able to arrange our way of life. There are a selection of companies that provide personalised calendars or personalised diaries. But all of these calendars will conform to the organisation identified in the Gregorian calendar with regards to the months of the year, a personalised calendar simply adds a personal touch when individuals arrange their lives by the calendar months.







The Gregorian calendar was founded by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, the name Gregorian comes from its founder. The Gregorian calendar is not that far removed from the Julian calendar, its predecessor founded by Julius Caesar in 46BC.







Before the Julian calendarthere was the Roman calendar. This was based on the phases of the moon, known as lunar phases, this is still applied these days by a number of nations. The Islamic, or Hijri calendar, always consists of twelve lunar months, but the Chinese, Hebrew, and Hindu lunar calendars are a little different; because a year can't be divided up equally into a precise amount of lunar phases, every two or three years their is a thirteenth month.







There was a lot of superstition based around the calendar months in Roman times. The months in the Roman calendar were made of either 29 or 30 days. A month made up of 29 days was identified as a 'hollow'month and one that contains 30 days was generally known as a 'full'month. Full months were regarded as being powerful and prosperous, whilst hollow months were believed to be unlucky. Thankfully, in today’s world, any superstition associated with the calendar is limited to Friday the 13th, a date that will never come more than twice a year. If we still shared the Roman superstitions, then having personalised calendars or personalised diaries could well be regarded as a bad omen, and the items would most likely not be in existence.







The Gregorian calendar was first introduced 4 October 1582, this date became 15 October. This was the method utilized in an effort to fix how the Julian calendar had handled leap years. The Julian calendar basically contained a leap year, one in every four, which may be translated to imply the calendar year averaged 365.25 days. The real calendar year is actually about 365.242189 days, that discrepancy induced an "error" of around 0.75 days each century. Within the Gregorian calendar we have a leap year every four years, except that every century we don’t have one, then every 400 years we do.







Unfortunately, when preparing the switch from Julian to Gregorian, an error was made when calculating the dates, and when switching calendars twelve days really should have been lost, as opposed to ten. Consequently our current calendar continues to have a mistake of three days every 10,000 years, which means that another change to our calendar system could eventually have to be made.







It wasn't until 1918 that the Julian calendar completely vanished from use. Most Catholic nations changed to the Gregorian calendar simultaneously, many Protestant nations took considerably longer. It was the USSR who finally switched in 1918, over 300 years after the calendar was first introduced.







The calendar has travelled in leaps and bounds since humans started to monitor the days, months and years; from using sundials and water clocks to map time, to using personalised calendars and personalised diaries with our own pictures and quotes on. And in spite of everything humans have discovered, the calendar we abide by is still incorrect. The history of the calendar is not really over and only time will tell if we are to observe more changes.











This article was written by R. Deans on behalf of i Name It, experts in personalised calendars and personalised diaries. For more info on personalised calendars and personalised diaries please visit iNameIt.co.uk