The Story Behind the Calendar We Use Every Day

The Gregorian calendar is the one you see everywhere today. In this system, a regular year has 365 days, and we add a special extra day, a “leap day,” to February every four years. You probably know the month breakdown: four months (April, June, September, November) have 30 days, most of the others have 31, and then there’s February, which has 28 days—or 29 during a leap year.

From Rome to Today

Our modern calendar is, in fact, a very fine-tuned version of the Julian calendar, which in turn was an improvement of the super-ancient Roman calendar. The first Roman calendar is believed to have been lunar, meaning that it was based on the phases of the moon. The Romans followed this by a 10-month, 304-day calendar. This left about 50 days in winter in a very disorganized manner, and one can only imagine the resulting mess: after some time, summer and winter months got all confused! And this made them seek something closer to reality.

Later, the Roman Republican calendar attempted to follow the example of the Greeks by assuming a 29.5-day lunar cycle. This led them to adopt a system whereby they added the months of January and February to synchronize things every four years. Despite many attempts to align it perfectly with the solar year, including sometimes throwing in extra months, it remained a challenge.

The big change came in 46 BC when Julius Caesar stepped in. He was the one who introduced the new, clever formula that would finally free the calendar from having to rely on watching the new moon. He added 10 extra days to the existing calendar, brought the year to 365 days, and installed the tradition of the leap day every fourth year.

The Last Tweak

Despite all efforts by Caesar, his Julian calendar was still imperfect. It was off by about 11 minutes each year, which caused the dates for events like the equinoxes to slowly drift. By the year 1582, this tiny error had built up to a significant 10-day difference from where it should have been!

Pope Gregory XIII fixed this problem rather dramatically: he literally skipped 10 days! He declared that the day after October 4th, 1582, would be October 15th. He also refined the leap year rule: while the Julian calendar made every fourth year a leap year, he added that century years like 1700, 1800, 1900 would only be leap years if they were divisible by 400. This reduced the error from one day every 128 years to an astonishing one day every 3,030 years!

The world did not adopt this Gregorian calendar all at once-it took centuries-but it is still the most universally accepted system of dating today.

The Meaning of a “Holiday”

What exactly is a “holiday”? Quite simply, it is a day designated either by tradition or by law, on which our usual pattern of work or schooling is suspended or reduced.

The word itself can mean different things depending on where you live:

In the US, for instance, “vacation” commonly denotes paid time off, while “holiday” is used to refer only to national, religious, or cultural days like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

In the U.K. and countries with British ties, the word “holiday” may mean a national day off or personal time off with pay for the purpose of a trip.

Generally, holidays are times to celebrate or commemorate some kind of important person, event, or cultural phenomenon. Whereas Christmas and New Year’s Day are truly global holidays, most holidays vary significantly from country to country. Even the observance of the same holiday can vary widely: some countries close down entirely while others grant only a half-day off. Perhaps Brazil’s Carnaval best illustrates this: for nearly an entire week, almost no businesses operate except for industrial, retail, or those directly connected to the carnival itself! U.S. Federal Holidays Federal holidays are days that are federally recognized within the United States. Essentially, when one of these holidays falls, non-essential federal offices are closed, and employees are paid to take the day off. Many private businesses have total discretion as to which federal holidays they observe. If the employee would have been required to work on the holiday, an extra amount (referred to as “holiday pay”) may be included on top of the regular wages earned. Some holidays are “fixed” because they fall on the same date every year, such as New Year’s Day, which always falls on January 1st. Others “float,” meaning their date is different every year. For example, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday always falls on the third Monday of January, and Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday of November.