What's in a Calendar?

It’s not even ten days into the so called New Year 2012 and we are already burdened with a flurry of unfortunate events – locally and internationally. To name a few that sort of got my attention:

1. Several murders right after the New Year in several parts of the city (GTA)
2. Female journalist harassed in Dhaka while doing investigative  report in the hands of a local MP
3. Death of several dozens of Shiite Muslims in Iraq in yet another suicidal bombing
4. New scuffle between the West and Iran on Iran’s nuclear ambition. There are threats of sanctions and blocking Straits of Hormuz by opposing parties (US and EU vs. Iran)
5. Many deaths and thousands desperately in need for help in South Sudan after another tribal conflict
6. Two Canadian’s death in Mexico in the hands of miscreants

However, none of these are out of ordinary and 2012 has nothing to do with it. It’s only a number to define a time frame. Things happen all the time and there are plenty of media and analysts to report and analyze them. I feel very little need for me to add to that mass today. Instead I went on to perform a little investigation into the origin of calendar concept itself. It is a vast field but here is a very concise summary of my findings.

Calendar:

             

The motivation for most calendars is to fix the number of days between return of the cycle of seasons (from spring equinox to the next spring equinox), so that the calendar could be used as an aid to planting and other season-related activities. The cycle of seasons (tropical year) had been known since ancient times to be about 365 and 1/4 days long.

Some of the primary calendar systems are: Solar, Lunar, Lunisolar, Astronomical.

The Ancient Egyptians were the first people to make a calendar which kept in step with the Sun and the seasons. They were also the first people to use a twenty four hour clock.
Before starting to use solar calendar the earliest Egyptian calendar was based on the moon’s cycles, but the lunar calendar failed to predict a critical event in their lives: the annual flooding of the Nile River which took place at a certain time of the year.  This was due to the fact that a solar year is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds long or 365.242199 days and the time between full moons is 29.53 days. Unfortunately, the cycles of lunar month and solar year did not mesh evenly. As a result lunar calendar would become out of synch of the seasons. The observant noticed that the sun moves northward and southward, through the equinoxes and solstices, as the cycle of nature in the temperate latitudes takes place. For an agricultural society, this cycle is of practical importance. Besides, it is also a good impetus for religious observances.
The Ancient Egyptians divided the day-time into twelve hours, numbered one to twelve, and the night-time into another twelve, numbered thirteen to twenty four. The hours were not all the same length: in the summer the hours of the day were longer than the hours of the night, and of course the other way round in the winter. By making all their months an even 30 days, they abandoned trying to sync with lunar cycles and concentrated instead on aligning with the solar year. However their calendar didn't quite align with a solar actual year. (30*12 = 360 days)
Eventually Julius Caesar, the Greek ruler of Egypt, asked an astronomer, Sosigenes of Alexandria, Egypt, to devise a better calendar. What resulted is called the Julian Calendar. He adopted months of 30 or 31 days length, keeping February at 28 days and introduced an extra day in February in leap years (to take care the ~.25 days per year discrepancy). Julius Caesar re-named the 5th month after himself. His successor, Augustus Caesar, re-named the 6th month after himself.
The 12 month calendar which currently serves as the world standard of time is called the Gregorian Calendar, named for Pope Gregory XIIIth who “revised” the previous Julian calendar (named for Julius Caesar). October 5, 1582 was followed by October 16th, 1582, correcting for the Julian calendar which had slipped behind the Spring Equinox by 10 days (the reason is that a tropical year (or solar year) is actually about 11 minutes shorter than 365.25 days. These extra 11 minutes per year in the Julian calendar caused it to gain about three days every four centuries, when compared to the observed equinox times and the seasons). Aside from an improved leap year calculation, Pope Gregory’s calendar has no structural differences from Julius Caesar’s calendar. The longer months were placed in the summer because the sun’s movement through the stars is slower in these months. A further correction of omitting the extra day on even century years, except every 400 years, keeps the calendar in close synchronization with the seasons.

Okay, now let’s end it on a different note. We hear so much about New Year resolution. Is it worth having? Does it make any difference whether we list out things to do in the new year or not? The answer may both be yes and no. It is always a good idea to first identify what needs to be done. So, listing them out is a good start. However, carrying them out in reality is a totally different thing. Perhaps having a long list of things that are not achievable serves no purpose. My suggestion: create a short list and work on to make them reality.

Source: Various web sites in the internet. Primarily: Wikipedia.

New Year celebration 2012

Back in Bangladesh, decades ago, celebrating New Year (both Bangla and English or Gregorian) had always been a part of my life since I was a young adult. Of course the nature and procedures of celebration differed quite a bit. Bangla New Year was invariably celebrated with a visit to the much anticipated Boishakhi mela  (New Year fare) while the English new calendar year was more of a late night event where we often grouped up with friends and families and did loud countdowns. My parents were never much into the New Year celebration; very few parents were at that time to my knowledge. So, it was unlikely that we would have very feisty parties but whatever we did it was good enough to keep me and my siblings occupied and satisfied. I remember one time we had arranged for a small gathering at the flat roof of our three storied building in Dhaka where I had lit up a small fire and barbequed chicken – not an usual event in our lives by any means. It gave us something to talk about for a while.

Since coming to North America many years had come and gone. As a single guy I had allowed several of them to pass quietly. Once I coupled up with Mili, my wife, things had gotten much groovier. New Year parties had become sort of common. However, we only started to have the best of the New Year parties once moving to Toronto and meeting this wonderful group of friends with young kids. Being the most party enthusiast in this particular group, I had arranged almost all of these New Year parties in our house over the years with plenty of plans to keep the kids engaged and entertained – most are the product of my lazy mind.

In 2010 we had gone away to Florida to visit the Disneyland (and other attractions) and obviously did not participate in any New Year’s party. This year we had stayed in Toronto and had planned to host one. Not only my kids but all the kids of our friends had always loved these parties and looked forward to them. Unfortunately though, several of the families from our closely knit group had traveled away for the holidays this year and my New Year’s plan almost seemed unrealizable. However, things just worked out at the end and we had a great party, possibly one of the better ones, with lots of food, fun filled activities, interesting contests and even an impromptu cultural show. Let’s have a quick look at the events of that night.   

High points:

• A memory test by my fellow ex-cadet sister Nipa, who brought back memories from several decades past by quoting parts of poems or prose that we read or studied in school years. While our senior brother Badal bhai blessed with great memory scored heavily I performed embarrassingly bad with only one correct answer (with pure luck).

• A trick question quiz. This had always been a super hit with the kids. [Check out some examples at the end of this blog]. Prizes were awarded based on score.

• A game of charade where two kids acted out ten different scenarios and all the teams, ten in total, tried to guess and noted their answers down. Later they were marked and prizes were awarded among three top teams.

• The much waited dancing with Hindi music of the four year old son of one of my friend. Unfortunately this took place half past one in the morning and the little guy were almost half asleep. Regardless he insisted on performing and did a great job with the whole audience cheering.

• Several impromptu/partially rehearsed dances of several of the kids present in the party. Traditionally I had always kept it low key so that instead of becoming a rehearsed show it feels like a fun filled family party where everything is imperfect.

• We had food in three different phases (appetizers, main courses, desserts) with every family preparing foods from different parts of the world including Italian, French, German, Chinese, American and of course Indian/Bangladesh.

• I found a simple non-alcoholic (none of us drink alcoholic beverages) cocktail recipe (banana, several types of fresh juices, milk, sugar) from the internet and prepared jug full of it. We started the New Year with a noisy count down and a drink of the delicious cocktail.

• The excitement of all these must have been too much because one of the ladies who often suffer from vertigo jumped up and performed an Indian classical dance. However, she had to retire into reclusiveness later with dizziness.

• I had requested every family to bring some gifts for the other kids. The gift swapping wasn’t planned until much after midnight but by popular demand by the kids (to the point where they threatened to desert the show) the gifts had to be handed over before the New Year countdown. No wonder they screamed at the top of their voices during count down.

• Later, once all our competitive activities had been completed, around 2 AM, we distributed the prizes (each family was requested to bring one for this purpose).

Low points:

• None!  (Okay perhaps me not being able to answer any of the memory questions. I can barely remember what happened yesterday, how could anybody expect me to remember 30-40 year old stuff? Give me a break!)

Some of the Trick Questions

• You live in Toronto. Your best friend lives in Ottawa. Why you have a dog and he has a cat?
• How can Amina be Rina's sister and Rina be Mina's sister but Amina is not Mina's sister?
• What seven-letter word can have hundreds of letters in it? 
• A man and his son were in an automobile accident. The man became unconscious on the way to the hospital and the boy was rushed into surgery. The emergency room surgeon said "I can't operate, that's my son!" How is this possible?
• A man says, "Brothers and sisters, have I none, but that man's father is my father's son." Who is he pointing at?

Try them out if you have time.