Frequently asked questions
Is this design for a sexagesimal calendar serious?
This design is of the utmost seriousness.
It is far more serious than the present calendar.
Is it taking a serious attitude to use two different systems to measure the time, the first one for the day, the second one for the year?
Is it taking a serious attitude to use units (the months) that perpetually change size to measure the time of the year?
Would it occur to us to measure lengths or capacities with variable units?
The present system is preposterous, its intricacy is unjustified, it brings only drawbacks.
Why challenge the Gregorian calendar?
For several reasons.
1) Using two systems to measure the time, one for the day (the
sexagesimal one), the other for the year (the Gregorian one) is
nonsensical.
2) The Gregorian calendar is needlessly intricate. If we used the
Gregorian system to measure the time of the day, that is what
would happen... Out of a cycle of 28 days, 14 different patterns
of day would succeed one another, the hours would be of various
durations, the whole bringing such time-lags about that we should
be obliged to change our watch every morning as we change our
calendar every January 1st (do we enough think about the preposterousness
of this move?).
3) This intricacy is a cause of innumerable problems. Not to have
only a standard year obliges to rewrite every year the schedules
of the transport companies, the school timetables, the work programme
of the firms, and so forth. In short, we fabricate a lot of problems,
then we waste precious time solving them.
4) The Gregorian calendar does not allow a permanent association
of a date of the month with a day of the week. Such a drawback
is quite unjustified.
5) The date of January 1st does not tally with any astronomical
event. It is purely arbitrary.
6) The Gregorian calendar is not admitted all over the world.
The initial reference to Christ's birth is not accepted everywhere
(why should it be?) and even within Christendom the orthodox (Julian)
calendar competes with it.
For all these reasons a universal calendar must replace the present one.
The proposed adoption changes the idea of a "week" to a "sweek" (= six-day-week). Does this not strike a blow at some traditions?
Such a reasoning would amount to confusing the walls of an house with its furniture.
The week exists from time immemorial. It is the (very approximate)
measure of a moon phase. It was in use for a long time when appeared
the current religions, each one bringing its own symbols to give
meaning to the succession of the days and years. No one is able
to claim either its authorship or its ownership. So let us tell
the walls of the house (the arithmetical layout of the year's
days) from its furniture (symbols and rites).
That being the case, adopting the sexagesimal calendar is only
a removal. We will leave an old and uncomfortable house where
there are not two rooms at the same level and where there are
so many nooks and corners that you never know exactly where you
are, for a new, spacious, comfortable and welcoming house into
which each will be able to move with one's own furniture.
And even if the pieces of furniture are not precisely set up in
the same way (it is inevitable) they will nonetheless keep their whole meaning.
And what about holidays?
Besides the holidays this calendar proposes, it is up to each country to institute its own holidays, religious or civil, according to its own traditions.
How will the legalities play out if this calendar is adopted?
It is not possible to study here the case of each country. Each country has its own rules and decision processes. Adopting the sexagesimal calendar calls for an adaptation of the local employment law. As its design is more straightforward (one only standard year with regular subdivisions), this adaptation will bring a simplification, and thus a clarification of the rules.
The sexagesimal year begins on the day of the boreal winter solstice. Now this day may be a December 21st or 22nd. How to solve this problem?
The sexagesimal year does not begin on December 21st or December 22nd.
It begins on... Frigée 1st. As postulated this date coincides
with the boreal winter solstice expressed in universal time. Now
the tropical year lasts 365.2422 days. The result is a quarter
of a day surplus per annum. This surplus is absorbed every four
years by adding a sixth adventitious day at the end of the year.
To be precise, this period will happen to be of five years (less
than once a century).
Here is indeed the versatility of the sexagesimal calendar: it
fits the revolution of the earth around the sun. It may thus be
used for thousands of centuries without reform.
In the sexagesimal calendar the years are notated with three digits. What will happen after the year 999?
The year after the year 999 will be the year 1000. And then 1001, 1002,
1003 and so on endlessly.
At present in many countries, when you write out a date in figures,
you keep only the last two figures of the year (e.g. 04 for 2004). When
you fill in a form, this may create a confusion between a person who
was born in 2001 and a person who was born in 1901. Keeping at least
three digits allows to avoid any mistake. It is only a conventional
notation.
Does this plan have any chance of succeeding?
To date all plans for a calendar reform have failed. This one has a real chance of succeeding precisely because it is leaning on the sexagesimal base which the whole humanity already uses to count minutes and seconds. This is why it is universal.
