The calendar, an imperfect human convention
This year 1980 has a peculiarity that does not happen every year: the month of February has an extra day. It is what is known as leap year, in religious terms, or leap year, according to the popular and traditional denomination.
This anomaly shows us that we have not yet found – or have not wanted to put into practice – a way to make a regular calendar that exactly coincides with the solar year. Difficulties and divergences go back a long way, and it can be argued that all relevant ancient cultures created their own calendar, seeking an accuracy never before achieved. The power of a calendar, however arbitrary, is so great that even today there are many different calendars in the world. I always remember that one day, in a hotel in Kathmandu, they brought me a newspaper with breakfast, and the first thing that caught my attention was the date: it was the 1st of the month of Baishak, of the year 2027. I was very impressed, because I, who was born in 1927, suddenly felt centenarian.
There is one thing that has withstood all the calendar changes in our culture: the names of the days of the week, dedicated to the sun, the moon, and the planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, with the exception of of the Latin countries, who changed the sun for the reference to the Lord, the “dominus”. When we say Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., then, we still use names imposed by the ancient Chaldeans; these words are one of the threads that unite us with the oldest historical humanity. The names of the months are more “modern” and show the typical tendency to flatter power: the months “Quintilis” and “Sextilis”, which preceded “September” and “October”, were renamed in honor of the emperors Julius (Caesar) and Augustus.
The Gregorian calendar, an outdated model
The current Gregorian calendar – established in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, so that in two years it will be four centuries old – is not sufficiently adequate from a scientific point of view, but it also has some practical drawbacks in relation to the forms of life in today’s society, the distribution of work, etc. There has been talk of replacing it with another for some time. The dominant idea is systematization: that all months have four weeks, that each month begins on the same day of the week, etc. You want to “normalize” the calendar, come on. I guess it would have benefits. Would it be enough to ask “will the 18th fall on Thursday or Friday?” and that annual surprise of seeing which day of the week will be Christmas, or a saint, or a birthday. We evolve decidedly towards perfect monotony.
A leap year and a centenary to remember
On February 29, 1880, precisely, Josep Maria Folch i Torres was born. An exceptional day, and that’s why he said he only aged one year every four. This 1980 is also a leap year. As if the calendar had wanted us to be able to celebrate the centenary of his birth with all accuracy. Will we be able to take advantage of this opportunity? What has been prepared for the 29th? I make, from this medium, a second appeal in memory of this nationalist, who had to go into exile… and still seems to be in a kind of official exile.
