The World Calendar

The World Calendar is a 12-month, perennial calendar with equal quarters. It is perennial because it remains the same every year.

Our present calendar is not perennial, but annual. It changes every year. It does so because its typical 365-day cycle is not evenly divisible by the number of days in the week: 365 ÷ 7 = 52, r 1. The unfortunate consequence of that one-day remainder is that the year typically begins and ends on the same weekday. So the next year must begin on the following weekday. This requires a new calendar every year.

Technically, our Gregorian calendar is a variously orderd cycle of 14 calendars. The calendar for the year beginning on Sunday differs from the one for the year beginning on Monday, and so on for all seven weekdays. Since the occurrence of leap year can alter any of these seven calendars, this raises the total to 14 calendars.

That's the mess the 365th day causes. If we took that day out of the calendar, the new year would typically begin on the very same weekday as the previous year. And if we likewise took leap day out of the calendar, the new year would always begin on the same weekday. We'd thus have a perennial calendar.

We can take a day out of the calendar without deviating from the solar cycle of approximately 365.24 days by simply regarding the day as a 24-hour waiting period before resuming the calendar again. These off-calendar days, also known as "blank days" or "intercalary days," won't be weekdays. It seems most reasonable to treat them as holidays.

That's part of the rationale behind The World Calendar, promoted by The World Calendar Association from 1930. Its perenniality has obvious benefits for scheduling and planning; and The World Calendar has other advantages over the Gregorian calendar too.

To prevent misuse of the name and corruption of the idea, The World Calendar has been copyrighted under the following description:

More Advantages of the World Calendar:

1. Numbered days of the month always fall on the same weekdays: so the birthday of Tuesday's Child is always on a Tuesday.
2. No need to schedule events by cumbersome weekday-and-month designations, like US Election Day, "First Tuesday after the First Monday in November": Election Day will always be Nov. 7; Thanksgiving (US) will always be on November 23rd.
3. The year divides regularly into quarters of equal size (91 days), with the same number of workdays (65) and weekend-days (26) in each quarter: a great improvement over the Gregorian calendar for statistical comparisons between quarters.
4. The variations in month-length are more regular than the Gregorian calendar: most months have 30 days; the first months of the quarters (Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct) have 31. Excluding Sundays, all months have the same number of days: 26.
5. Transition from the Gregorian calendar would be extremely simple: reform could be instituted in 2006 (a Gregorian year beginning on Sunday) and only a few dates in February, March, April, May, August and December would be affected.

Some Disadvantages of the World Calendar:

1. Religious groups obliged to worship every seven days will have a problem with off-calendar days: sometimes there will be seven days between two occurrences of the weekday they choose to worship.
2. There are FOUR Fridays the 13th EVERY YEAR!