DETROIT – I am struggling to truly believe this is the last day of November. Not in an “I can’t believe summer camp is already over!” way, but in a more “Tomorrow is December? Already?” way.
Speaking of December -- it’s weird that October -- which translates directly to “eighth month” -- is the tenth month, even though December translates to “tenth month,” right? It’s not just them. September and November translate to “seventh month” and “ninth month,” so the last four months are off by two months.
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Well, there’s a reason! In the Roman calendar, which was used up until the first century B.C., there were 10 months. It was replaced by the Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar, which introduced the 365-day/12-month calendar. It even included leap years. The last four months were still the last four months, but they no longer were in their titular slots.
The Julian calendar was the calendar used for the majority of the western world until 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, which was largely the same except for how it treated leap years: there were now exceptions.
“Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400.”
United States Naval Observatory’s ‘Introduction to Calendars’
Now, because of this change, the Gregorian and Julian calendars aren’t really aligned anymore. It’s Nov. 17 on the Julian calendar, not the 30th.
There have been proposals over the years to update and change modern calendars, but they never really get anywhere because of the egregious amount of work and the massive disruption it would take to change all the infrastructure to accommodate a new calendar, even if it had one small single change.
The United States alone spent more than $100 billion before Y2K to make sure the millennium computer bug wouldn’t destroy everything. $9 billion was spent by the U.S. government and $91 billion was spent by banks, airlines, utility providers, communication -- basically any company that used a computer.
It’s estimated that the world as a whole spent half of a trillion dollars making sure the society would still exist on Jan. 1, 2000.
The cost to make changes to a calendar today is likely incalculable. So, let’s just be cool with the months being in the wrong spots.
Plus, I heard that Julius Ceasar fella got what was coming to him eventually. That had to be about the months being named wrong, right?
This originally was published in ClickOnDetroit’s Morning Report Newsletter. You can get Metro Detroit’s news, headlines, deep dives and more in your inbox every morning.
