Sunday 12 March 2023

Today Is...Aztec New Year

Did you know that you can reuse calendars?
In 2023, you can reuse calendars from 1989, 1995, 2006 and 2017 and if you keep this years calendar until 2034 you can use it then also but that wouldn't work if you follow the Mexica Calendar because that is divided into 18 'months' of 20 days each.
To anyone paying attention, that makes 360 days so the Aztecs came up with the idea of adding on 5 'nameless' days at the end of the year although these extra days are known as wasted days and they avoid doing most activities during these days.
As there are no leap years and the Earth doesn't conventionality travel around the Sun in exactly 365 days, the calendar does get out of whack so they introduced 13 extra extra days every 52 years to try and bring everything back together again.
That may sound overly complicated but ours isn't much better, 52 weeks split into months of 4 weeks 3 days, or 4 weeks 2 days one or 4 weeks exactly or 4 weeks and 1 day every four years, why not just have 13 months of 28 days with the leap years every 4 years still and 1 non-day day, like an extra bank holiday so a day which just doesn't count.
It makes sense to me to make it New Years Day and start the year with the 1st January the following day, it already has a name and it is already a Bank Holiday so no messing about with when to slide the extra free day in.
Every first would always be a Monday, every 28th would be a Sunday and every payday would always be a Friday although i'm sure calendar makers, Astrologers and people born on the 29th, 30th and 31st of any given month may kick up a bit but they will be outnumbered by the rest of us born on the 1st to 28th so we can ignore them.

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