Re: WHAT calendar for the current year 2012

On Jan 28, 2008 1:33 PM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> The next likely explanation was that, in a Hellenocentric
> world, they were still using the analogue of the Julian calendar, as the
> Eastern Orthodox continue to do for religious purposes today; the current
> difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is 13 days, which maps
> to a 1-day difference in weekdays in the same direction as that shown on the
> WHAT calendar.
Ah; that does make a certain amount of sense, though it's not what happened.

The beginning of the year is fairly close to the winter solstice
(though not quite on the exact date), meaning that the WHAT date is -
in the first two thirds of our January - eight days after our date,
since the first month starts on our 24 December of the previous year.
(Ray's website doesn't mention why this particular day was chosen as
the start of the year: "For some reason, which is not clear, New
Year's Day is not the winter solstice itself, but a few days later,
corresponding to our 24th December." I suppose it's possible that
there's an internal reason, even if there's no in-universe reason.
Ray?)

You'll also notice that the month lengths aren't the same as ours --
most striking in the second month, which always has 30 days rather
than 28 or 29, and in the second half of the year, since instead of
going 31-31 for July-August the WHAT calendar continues the regular
31-30 alternation, so the date offsets in the second half of the year
are longer than in the first half.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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