Ten or 12 Months, It's Still a Year to Me

The Roman calendar was based on the moon, so every year it came up ten days short and also had ten months, beginning on March 1. An Egyptian astronomer that Caesar met through Cleopatra showed him a calendar based on the sun, which gave us the twelve month year. I always wondered why October (oct meaning eight) was the 10th month, November (novem meaning nine) the 11th, and December (dec meaning ten) was the twelfth. There used to be eight through ten but when Caesar added two months he stuck them in front of these, and started the new year on January 1 rather than March.

Wait a minute – isn’t 52 weeks divisible by 4 weeks per month = 13 months? So why don’t we have 13 months, each with four weeks? We can still add back the stupid leap day. Oh yeah, the “wheels of capitalism” pretend that they need quarters or four equal 13-week periods… Well, they still could have four quarters, they just wouldn’t end perfectly at month’s end. The year that Caesar changed the calendar, he caused a 455-day year, called “the year of confusion”. [That was also the year they invented annual salaries!]

Interestingly, 1642 yrs later, the slightly incorrect calculations had led to the date actually being about ten days off, and Pope Julian, after listening to advisors, simply “lopped off ten days”, by having people go to bed on October 4th and wake up on October 15th. Some cities rioted, thinking he’d stolen ten days from them (likely employers paying annual salaries!), but peasants in the country hardly noticed and life continued as before.

We now lose a day only once every three thousand years. I favor the even earlier calendar, Phoenicians I believe, of 12 months, 30 day each with FIVE days left over at the end for celebrating, called "Holy Days", our source for the word holidays.