Night/Day
Imagine if you have no means of recording your birthday. Then you would never know your age. Imagine if there was no system of knowing the days, months, and years.
Then there would be no recorded date of history, no means of knowing important events,
no calendar to check your daily schedule, no way to reckon the passing of time. It would be like existing in the Paleozoic Era.
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A calendar is a physical device which shows the periods of time, the days, weeks, months, and years synchronized with the cyclical movement of the sun or the moon.
Whenever the year's end comes near, one thing is certain to come your way – a new calendar. Whether it's a gift or a giveaway, your yearly transition will not be complete without it.
Once Upon a Time
The term ‘calendar’ originated from the Latin word kalendae, which pertains to the ‘first day of every month.’ It is not known when the first calendar was made and who made it. But in the Bible, there were already chronological records even before Noah's time in the Book of Genesis, which is approximately 4,300
to 6,800 years ago. This approximation corresponds to the oldest archaeologically verified civilization, the Sumerians, and to their system of recording time.
Even much earlier, Stone Age people marked the passing of days by etching the walls of caves. Ancient Filipinos reckoned time by tying knots in a string to remember the days, or counting the full moons and carving the counts on bamboo poles. This is important for them in knowing when palay (rice paddy) should be harvested after planting, or monitoring the onset of the rainy seasons, as well as keeping track
of their ages.
Later on, the periodic occurrence of natural phenomena helped ancient people to measure time. The day equals the time the earth rotates on its axis, the complete passing of morning and night. The lunar month marks the time it takes the moon to complete its revolution around the earth. The solar year is the equivalent to a full circle of the earth around the sun.
In Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq), the first calendars of the Sumerian city states were lunar or based on the movement of the moon which began with the moon’s first crescent.
The Egyptians were one of the first to adopt a predominantly solar calendar. They were also among the first astronomers of ancient times, and their knowledge of astronomy helped them device their calendar. They discovered that the annual flood of the Nile River came soon after the Dog Star, Sirius, reappeared after several months of invisibility. They used this event to fix their calendar, and came to recognize a year of 365 days, made up of 12 months, each 30 days long, and an extra dividend of five days added at the end of every year.
According to historian and Egyptologist James Henry Breasted (1865-1935), the earliest date known in the Egyptian calendar corresponds to 4236 B.C. in our present-day calendar system. That’s 6,247 years ago!
The Mayan people, on the other hand, believed the world had been created and destroyed twice before the birth of the era they lived in, and dated the inception of the era as August 13, 3114 B.C. (Gregorian calendar). They reckoned time from this date on two systems: the ‘long count’ and the ‘calendar round.’ The long count was based on a 360-day year called a tun, divided into 18 months of 20 days each. The Mayan counting system was based on 20 rather than 10, and years were not calculated in decades but in groups of 20 called k'atuns. Twenty k'atuns, is equivalent to four centuries, called a b'aktun.
Greco-Roman Times
The Greeks and the Romans have a similar calendar system – having a year of 300 days composing of 10 months – during ancient times. This was an approximate of the earlier Middle-eastern lunar calendar.
The earliest known Roman calendar consisted of a year of 304 days. The Romans seemed to have ignored the remaining 60 days, which fell in the middle of winter. The 10 months composing the calendar were named Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November,
and December. The last six names were taken from the Roman words for five, six, seven, eight, and ten. Romulus, the legendary ruler of Rome, supposed to have introduced this calendar about 738 B.C.
The legendary Roman ruler Numa added two months, Januarius and Februarius, at the end of the calendar year. To make the calendar correspond approximately to the solar year, he also ordered the addition of a month called Mercedinus, which had 22 or 23 days. This month was inserted
between February 23 and 24 every other year.
The Julian Calendar
During the reign of Emperor Julius Caesar (c. 100-44 B.C.), the accumulated error caused by the incorrect length of the Roman year had made the existing calendar about three months ahead of the seasons. In 46 B.C., Caesar asked the astronomer Sosigenes to review the calendar and make ways of improving it. Sosigenes suggested to disregard the moon in calculating the calendars. He re-divided the year into 12 months of 31 and 30 days, except for the last month, February, which had only 29 days (this was later reduced to 28 days by his successor to the throne, Augustus Caesar) during regular years
and one more day during the leap year. To realign the calendar with the seasons, Caesar ruled that the year we know now as 46 B.C. should have 445 days. The Romans called it ‘the year of confusion.’
The Romans renamed Quintilis July, in honor of Julius Caesar. The next month, Sextilis was renamed August by the Roman Senate to honor Augustus Caesar, adopted son of Julius Caesar. Later, the fifth month became the seventh month and the sixth became the eighth and so on.
This is why September, which came from the word Septem, meaning seven, is now the ninth month of the year.
The Julian calendar (above) was widely used for more than 1,500 years. It provided for a year
that lasted 3651/4 days. But it was actually about 11 minutes and 14 seconds longer than the solar year. This difference, again, led to a gradual change in the dates on which the seasons began. By the year 1580, the spring equinox fell on March 11, or 10 days earlier than it should.
The Gregorian Calendar
In 1582, on the advice of astronomers, Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585) corrected the difference between season and calendar by ordering 10 days dropped from October 15, 1582. This procedure restored the next equinox to its proper date. To correct the Julian calendar's errors regularly, the pope decreed that February would have an extra day in century years that could be divided by 400, such as 1600
and 2000, but not in others, such as 1700, 1800, and 1900. This is the calendar in use today
in most part of the world.
The Gregorian calendar is so accurate that the difference between the calendar and solar years is now only about 26 seconds. The difference will increase by 0.53 seconds every hundred years, because the solar year is gradually getting shorter.
In other parts of the world, particularly in Asia, there were also independent origins of the calendar. Both the Hindu and Chinese calendars follow the lunar revolution and are slightly more accurate
than its Middle-Eastern and European calendars.
Baby-naming Guide
With the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, it had become a local custom to name a baby after the saint whose feast day corresponds to his birthday.
For example, Andres Bonifacio (1863-1897) was named after San Andres because Bonifacio was born on November 30, which is the saint's feast day. His brother Procopio was named after San Procopio.
Jose Rizal (1861-1896), on the other hand, was not named after San Jose, but after San Protacio, whose feast day is July 19. Hence, the full name Jose Protacio Rizal. Apolinario Mabini's birth date (July 22, 1864) missed the feast of San Apolinario (July 23) by a day, but he was still baptized after his name.
Honorio Lopez (1875-1958), a Filipino patriot who fought against the Spaniards (1896), the Americans (1899), and the Japanese (1947) as a soldier, propagandist, and journalist, prepared an almanac containing the names of these so-called saints with the hidden intention and propaganda material to promote the Philippine cause during the underground days of the revolution against the Spaniards. Lopez's 1897 calendar was known as La Sonrisa (The Smile), before it was chased deep into the underground where it earned the new name, Dimasalang (The Untouchable). Lopez’s version is still sold at the Quiapo church patio, known as the Kalendaryong Tagalog ni Honorio Lopez. Lopez, who was born on the 30th of December, was named after San Honorio.
So, if you're born on December 2, would you care to be named after Santa Bibiana? How about those born on December 10, would the name Gorgonio or Gorgonia suit your personality? - Ernee Lawagan
THE END?
Because of the misinterpretation of certain overzealous doomsayers and thanks to science-fiction movies, it circulated worldwide that the world would end on December 21, 2012, in conformance with the end of a Mayan calendar cycle.
Although the date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican (Mayan Long Count) calendar, it is simply the day that the calendar will go to the next b’aktun. The date December 20, 2012 has a Long-Count value of 12.19.19.17.19. It is not the end of the calendar, but is the last day having a b’aktun value of 12. The next day, December 21, 2012, is 13.0.0.0.0. Such end of b’aktuns occurs approximately every 400 years, and no cataclysmic event has occurred at the end of the 12 previous completions.
The maximum date that can be designated in the Long-Count notation is 19.19.19.17.19. It corresponds to the Gregorian date of October 12, 4772 which is the ‘true’ last date of the Mayan calendar.
