Re: The New Year

        Bless you. I was just thinking about wishing everyone a (very) belated New
Year, which was last Sunday (Dec. 22). Today (Dec. 29) is 13)3)1)1)8 by the
Enamyn calendar, which means that this is the eighth day of the first month
of the first year in the third octade of the thirteenth cycle. I'll explain
that in a minute.

On Sunday 29 December 2002 09:13 am, James Landau wrote:
>  I decided long ago that 7215 B.C. in the Gregorian calendar would be at
> the same time in the universe that the Kankonians were beginning their
> transition to measured time. Therefore Jesus would be born right about the
> year 7215 by the Kankonian calendar, the Roman Empire (or at least the
> Western Roman Empire) would fall in 7691 (that's 7,215 + 476) and
> <u>1984</u> would be retitled <u>9199</u>.
        Minor nit-pick: Jesus was most likely born B.C. 4-7,  but you may have
already known that.

>  (A note for those of you who aren't familiar with Kankonian dates: the
> Kankonian year is a mite shorter than Earth's year, lasting 360 dates,
> making the days cleanly distributable at 30 per month. A day is simply
> named by naming the day of the month, then the number of the month (drert),
> then the year. So the eleventh day of Drert zash Treil (Month Seven) in the
> year 3174 would be written 11-7-3174 (at least in Arabic numerals). The
> length of one drert is fairly close to the full cycle of Akalla, but the
> Kankonians prefer an arbitrary division of months that makes a year crisply
> divisible, 12 x 30. Tziran has an even rougher correlation to the months,
> going through 17.53 phases a year. This would give you 360 days from 1-1 to
> 30-12. End of note.)
        Ok, but there are 365.2422 days in a mean tropical year, which means that
your calendar will drift about 5.25 days against the seasons every year. Do
you have some means of adding days to compensate for the drift?

>  But then I played around with that September 17 idea and guess where their
> equivalent of Christmas landed? I counted back a few days and noticed what
> date Kankonia's "25-12" (the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month)
> corresponded to. Bad idea.
        Christmas, when it replaced the Saturnalia festival, was tied to the winter
solstice. It still is to some respects, so it would be perfectly possible to
have it in the fourth month. (The Enamyn, btw, just lumped their celebration
of the winter solstice (their new year) with their observation of Christmas.)

>  I tried to think where else I could imagine we were when a new year was
> beginning in a galaxy far, far away. How about March 22? That would make
> March 22, 2002 the same day as 1-1-9217 (give or take a few hours or
> minutes based on when the two planets' respective suns rise). That time of
> year always had a comfortably morbid feel to me. Like it was a good time to
> die.
        Well, March has never been my favorite time of year, either. :) Are you
deliberately aiming for the spring equinox? What's the "back-history" of the
calendar? Was it invented by humans or aliens? If human, than solstices,
equinoxes, and other heavenly phenomena make a good choice. If alien, throw a
dart at the calendar and call it golden. :)

>  Where have you decided to start your new years, and in what seasons?
        Well, my choice of the winter solstice is not arbitrary, because it is based
on an observable phenomena: after the solstice, the days become longer.
That's reason to party, even if there are still months of winter left. It
makes for good mythopoeia, because the culture can create all kinds of
reasons for why the sun has won, and yet winter still has a hold on the land.
The spring equinox, as you observe, is also a good choice, because the
weather is becoming warmer. The fall equinox would be good, because it
signifies the end of harvest. And so on and so forth.
        Ok, the Enamyn calendar. The calendar is a solar calendar, but there are
means of tracking the moon phases, so that, in a given year, the new moon
date will be on the same day of the month. (Well, there are a couple of rules
to this, but I'll save that for another time.) The 12 months are alternately
29 and 30 days, for a period of 354 days in a year. At the end of every 32
month, a 30-day month is inserted so that the calendar does not drift away
from the seasons. However, this does mean that the end of the calendar year
and the winter solstice does not line up except every eight years, which is
why this New Year's would have been a big deal. (There are methods to
determine the date of the winter solstice, two in fact, but I have yet to
decide which I favor better. Hence, I'll have to save discussion on
calculating solar events for another time.)
        There are eight years in an octade, which has the following pattern for
years: ooEooEoE (where o = an ordinary year of 354 days, and E = an extended
year of 384 days). Because there are 99 months in an octade, and because
every 33 month is an intercalculated month, the extra months always fall in
the same place: in the third year, the 13th month is after the 8th month; in
the sixth year, after the 4th month; in the 8th year, after the 12th month.
        Finally, there is the cycle, which is 16 octades or 128 years long. At the
end of a cycle, the 13th month has 29 days instead of 30. This makes the
calendar accurate to a day in  a period of 82,000 years. The current cycle
began Dec. 22, 1986, so the current octade (the third in the cycle) and year
started last week. Hence the current date 13)3)1)1)8.
        The epoch date is Dec. 21, 450, which was the first day after the winter
solstice and the first day after the new moon. There is some reason to
believe that the old Enamyn calendar was a lunar calendar; hence, this would
have been an opportune time to change the calendrical system.
        The Enamyn day goes from sunrise to sunrise; the daylight portions are
divided into eight "hours" and the nighttime portions into eight "watches."
Because the length of day changes with the seasons, the lengths of the hours
and watches similarly change. In general, the fourth hour is around noon, and
the fourth watch is around midnight. The system, apart from the actual number
of hours and watches, is quite similar to how the Romans and Greeks expressed
the time of day.
        :Peter

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