Today you woke up thinking you are in 2020, right? That’s not totally true… According to Webexhibits.com, there are approximately 40 different calendars worldwide… but, the most used ones are 3: the Gregorian, the Chinese and the Islamic.
Here few facts about those calendars which you may not know:
The Gregorian Calendar, also known as the Christian Calendar, is the most widely used in the world today. Introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, it replaced the Julian Calendar (implemented by emperor Julius Caesar in 46 B.C), because it didn’t properly reflect the actual time it takes the Earth to circle once around the Sun (the Gregorian is a solar calendar). But the real reason for the pope to replace the Julian calendar by the Gregorian one (named after him, despite of not being himself its creator) was because Easter was miscalculated on the Julian Calendar – and this bothered him, so he introduced the new calendar which calculated correctly spring equinox. Most countries (catholic ones basically) accepted the Gregorian Calendar by 1584. But other countries took a bit longer: UK in 1752, Germany in 1775, Japan in 1873, Russia in 1917, and China only in 1949.
Despite of using the Gregorian Calendar for official issues, the Chinese keep on using their Chinese calendar for their celebrations. The Chinese New Year causes the largest human migration in the world – the most important part of this celebration is the family reunion: everyone should come back home for New Year’s Eve Dinner. The beginning of a new year is marked when the moon is midway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Unlike most other calendars, the Chinese calendar doesn’t count years in an infinite sequence. Instead, years have names that are repeated every 60 years. Each year is assigned a name consisting of two components: the Celestial Stemm (words without English equivalent: jia; yi; bing; ding; wu; ji; geng; xin; ren and gui) and the Terrestrial Branch (which are the animals of the Chinese zodiac cycle: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig). And you may ask – which is the current year in the Chinese Calendar? While in the Gregorian Calendar we’ve already celebrated the new year in January 1st, for the Chinese we’ll turn the year of the Rat 4718 by January 25th.
The same happens with our Muslims friends, as all religious duties, such as prayer, fasting in the month of Ramadan and pilgrimage are calculated using the Islamic calendar. According to it, we’re in the year 1441 AH. The calendar started in AD 622 during the emigration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. It’s a Lunar calendar and each month starts when the lunar crescent is first seen by a human observer’s eye. The new year will be celebrated in August 19th 2020… so, put back your party clothes and get ready to celebrate it by next summer!
Here in ElTorn we also have our calendar 😊. Like the Gregorian, it has 12 months (with weekend and week-long courses being held every month) and workshops distributed along the year… And considering that 2020 is a leap year, it couldn’t be less – our February is full of novelties! Happy new 1441, 2020 and year of the Rat 4718 to all of you!!
