A Brief History of Calendars
The earliest calendars were also astrological in nature. Planting for example, was based upon the return of the Spring equinox and that was based upon the solar or tropical year. One such calendar which attempted to calculate the growing seasons was the Julian calendar. It was first used in 45 BC and employed by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar. The Julian calendar had a regular year of 365 days and was further sub-divided into 12 months. The Julian year was about 365.25 days long. To fix that 1/4 day discrepancy, the idea of the leap year was born and consisted of adding one additional day to the month of February once every fourth year. Even so, the Julian calendar was still off by 11 minutes. Those extra 11 minutes per year caused the Julian calendar to gain about three days every four centuries. Lunar calendars are based upon the rotation of the moon around the earth and to a large degree determine the action of the tides. The traditional Islamic calendar is a lunar based calendar. It has a 12 month yearly cycle and has either 354 or 355 days. The Islamic calendar is used by Muslims around the world to determine their holy days and days of festivities. The first year of the Islamic calendar was based upon the time the Prophet Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina. Since the traditional Islamic calendar is a purely lunar calendar, it is not synchronized with the seasons and has an yearly deviance of 11 or 12 days. So that, the same seasonal relationship is occurs every 33rd year. In our modern era, however, the Islamic calendar is also used in conjunction with the Gregorian calendar. Solar calendars are used to calculate the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun. One complete rotation determines the length of a year. The year is broken down into seasons and then into months; and a month is further divided into weeks. Each week is further broken down into a 7 day period of time. The Christian Calendar begins each week on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday; whereas the Hebrew calendar begins on the Sabbath or Saturday and ends on a Sunday. A lunisolar calendar is a combination of a lunar calendar and a solar calendar. In a lunisolar calendar most years have 12 months but every second or third year it will contain 13 months. The Hebrew, Buddhist, Hindu, Tibetan, and Chinese, are all examples of a lunisolar calendar, as was the Japanese calendar until 1873 when it was changed to the Gregorian calendar.
Although our American system of time is based up the Christian Calendar, our work week runs from Monday to Friday. Our business calendars are based upon a 5 day work schedule: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So, for many of us, our week begins on a Monday instead of on a Sunday, and ends on a Friday instead of Saturday. Of course this is only psychological in nature because we tend to look forward to our weekends off. And so, Saturday and Sunday are grouped together and thought of as a mini-holiday or a period of rest. Financially speaking, however, a business calendar, or 'Fiscal Calendar' is often based upon the individual company's platform of when it begins each fiscal accounting period until it ends that same period. It does not always begin on January 1st for example.
Wether in business or in our own personal lives calendars and/or day planners have become increasingly important to us. If you are in a business you schedule appointments with associates and clients, business trips and seminars all the time. In our own personal use we schedule anything from doctor’s appointments to the next family reunion. To make the lives around us easier, we may also hand out calendars as gifts or tokens of our appreciation. In our modern age, however, physical calendars have many purposes. While they help businesses and families in scheduling their daily activities, they also adorn our walls and desktops and in so doing have become a conversation piece. We say, “Oh, I love beagles and that is such a nice calendar”... “where did you get it from,” we may ask? And with relative ease we answer: “From Pet Prints, or from the “Willowcreek Press” and from a web site called, “beagle-land.com” in their book section. We have become very proud and appreciative of our calendars and treasure them for their aesthetic beauty, photographic quality and monetary value. For this reason, many have become collectibles and kept as keepsakes. Such is the case for the beagle calendars shown here on this page.
|
