As I write this, it’s Saturday. That means tomorrow will be Sunday. There’s only one problem: It’s been Sunday every day this week since Tuesday.
New Year’s Eve is an event that cries out to be held/observed on the same day of the week every year. It practically demands to be exempted from the usual week-in, week-out flow of our lives. And if it doesn’t cry out or make this demand, then I do.
I’m suffering from an extreme form of calendrical confusion this year, with a mid-week New Year’s Eve piled on top of two weeks of an out-of-the-ordinary travel schedule, where one day slid tiredly (asphaltly?) into the next. Where there was no at-home routine to maintain; where there were no weekly obligations to meet. Where it didn’t matter what day of the week it was (The Interstate never sleeps, you know?); where it mattered only how many more days of travel remained.
Enough is enough. I can’t be the only one who is grateful that this past week was not the occasion for a pop mental-competence test.
Doctor, I’m absolutely OK
to manage my finances,
to live in my house,
and to drive my car.
I just don’t happen to know
what day of the week it is.
So let’s do this, shall we? Let’s assign someone to rejig our December calendars such that New Year’s Eve always falls on a Saturday, letting the New Year and the first week of the year start, as God undoubtedly intended, on a Sunday. I could make myself available for this effort for a small fee. I would even do it for free.
Write your MP today. Or, given that we’re struggling with the calendar instituted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, maybe we need to write to the current Pope. I’m not absolutely clear on who has jurisdiction in these matters, but I’m 100% sure that the time has come for a change.
The only problem being that any given month starting on a Sunday is immediately guaranteed a Friday the 13th. This plan would doom us to starting every year in that manner.
I, for one, never had a problem with triskaidekaphobia, but Friday 13 March of 2020 may have changed my mind. That was the day the world shut down in the face of COVID-19.
For your further consideration…
Vince – Dagnab it, I knew there’d be something. Maybe this is why it took a pope to institute this calendar in the first place. “Because I said so!” 🙂 Not sure I can get away with taking such a high-handed approach…
Sorry, I have thoroughly enjoyed ten days of weekends since Christmas. Especially good is that there are no pressing reasons to go out in the freezing morning temps. Of course, I have been cosily at home, not travelling asphalt. Happy New Year!
Judith – I like it. Let’s preserve that lovely “weekend” feeling–while alleviating any potential angst about losing one’s place–by formalizing a calendrical period exempt from the normal schedule.
You mean that Old Christmas—January 6—would always fall on a Thursday?
Your plan makes sense in that regard.
Tom
Tom – OK, we’ll add that to the “pro” column!
I too have felt we’ve just been through two weeks of Sundays. I didn’t know why.
Thank you for explaining it to me.
Unfortunately I might have to side with Vince
Jim R – 🙂 Well, there’s an argument for leaving things bad enough alone, as it were. They can always be worse . . .
Isabel…..it’s about time that you accept the Retirees Calendar.
Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, SUNDAY
Eric – 🙂 Tricky for making (& keeping!) doctor appointments . . .
I have felt that way ever since the school bus quit stopping at our front gate five days a week. Unless one has a definite appointment, there is little in the countryside to distinguish one day from another, even after consulting the date on the computer screen. For part of the year, weather has the upper hand over the calendar. Ice, heavy fog, heavy snow, deep cold can prevent the car from leaving the driveway or getting to the main road. Power outages used to be winter events, but “the grid” — which must look more like webs in a spider colony than like a map with districts — can go down at any season thanks to errant or suicidal squirrels landing in transformer stations, high winds and flooding rain, forest fires, or “unforeseen circumstances” such as helicopters tangled in major power lines. I will take this as a reminder to top up my emergency water supplies and put some of the Christmas candles where I can find them in the dark.
Laurna – 🙂 Yes, the rhythms of life that seem endless until they end, somehow. I was out early one morning recently at home and amazed to see all sorts of people out and about in our neighbourhood, waiting with kids at the school-bus pick-up spot. I never knew that they were there – or thought about it. And yet I did that same drill for years.
I am not sure what the problem is.
In addition to Eric’s retirement calendar one has the comic page in the newpaper to help define the week- 3 pages on saturday and a 1/2 page on sundays.
Barry – 🙂 I think the problem arises when trying to maintain a day-of-the-week system without the usual clues. One answer is, as you and Eric note, to switch to a new system altogether.