Saturday, August 06, 2016

A Logical Calendar Reform Concept Worth Considering [#CalendarReform Blog]

What if the last day of July was July 30th, every single year, and the 210th day of the year, every single year?

That's the way it would be if we adopted the "Thirty-eleven" (30x11) Calendar, a simple, logical and rational calendar reform proposal that's worth considering.

The calendar seeks to simplify the Gregorian calendar by giving the first 11 of the 12 months 30 days each. The last month, December, gets 35, keeping the 365-day calendar year we have now. In leap years (which remain the same as now) we get a 36-day December.

The benefit of this idea is simplicity. With 30 days in each month, it would be easy to determine, say, that the 150th day of the year would be the last day of the 5th month - May 30. In fact, for the first half of the calendar year, the last days of the month are the 30th, 60th, 90th, 120th, 150th, and 180th days of the year. Such numbering allows easy access to any day of the year.

Another quirk of the calendar is that each month within a calendar year starts two weekdays after the previous month. If January, for example, would start on a Sunday (as it will in the 2023 Gregorian Calendar) then February begins on a Tuesday, March on a Thursday, April on a Saturday and May on a Monday. It's very easy to determine, therefore, May 30 would be the 150th day of the month, and a Tuesday.

Drawbacks are few, and include a "long" December, which would have 35 or 36 days - numbers that are hard to get used to - and the seasons would not begin on the same days they do now, but would drift back about two days on the calendar. That doesn't seem too high of a price to pay, however, for a calendar that is more logical.

For more information, visit www.30x11.com.

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