Moving Calender?

[Hainted]

I've got a calender set up for my world that consists of 400 days,57 weeks,and 8 months.The extra day is the beginning of the new year/end of the old year and isn't counted.It exists but is a worldwide holiday and any births/deaths/significant events that occur on it are either counted on the day before New Years or the day after.Since I don't have Leap Year the days rotate around meaning that while New Year's is always the first day of Spring the actual month it occurs in changes slowly over time until every 400 years the days line up again. If I decided to add more holidays and keep the idea of them being outside the flow of the calender what would be the minimum amount of extra days I need to keep the moving days?

I think 7 more holidays leaving me with a 392 day and 56 week year.

[Maur]

Re: Moving Calender?

 

There's no reason why a world couldn't have a longer year than here. Not sure why a civilization would setup a calendar that didn't fit with the seasons unless the seasons themselves were inconsistent in length (George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice").

[Cancer]

Re: Moving Calender?

 

Another thread relevant to this

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Moving Calender?

 

First, decide how long the solar year is. (RW: 365.24 days)

Then decide on any subdivisions of that year, such as by a lunar cycle (months, RW lunar cycle is ~28 days).

Then decide on the calendar used by the people, which may correspond to the solar year (as the RW Gregorian calendar), or to the lunar cycles (RW Hebrew and Muslim Calendars), or even to neither (no RW examples, except due to inaccuracy).

 

Holidays can be tied to points within the solar year, or points within the lunar cycle, or both (such as Easter), or to specific days within the calendar, regardless of where they fall in the solar and lunar cycles.

 

And of course in fantasy worlds, it can be even more complicated than that, as there could be more than one lunar cycle (more than one moon), or maybe even more than one solar cycle, or maybe even some completely new cycle, variable seasons, etc.

 

Note that a week does not correspond to any real phenomenon and is seven days long in the real world because it represents approximately one-quarter of the lunar cycle. So "ideally" if you start counting days on the new moon, on the seventh day, you'll have a first half-moon, then a full moon after seven more days, and a laft half-moon after seven more days, and finally another new moon after another seven days. For better or worse, the RW lunar cycle is not exactly 28 days, so counting weeks to determine the phase of the moon won't quite work.

 

In my fantasy world, for example, the solar year is (exactly) 496 days long, and the lunar cycle is (exactly) 28 days long. I wanted the numbers to be exact for simplicity. There are two main calendars: the Neronian calendar has 18 lunar months to the year so each month begins exactly on the new moon. However, this makes the year a bit too long, so to keep the calendar in synch with the seasons, two months are left out of every seven-year period (called a "hod" or a "hod of years" in my setting). And then there's the Temnan calendar, which has a year of sixteen 31-day months, thus fitting exactly into the solar year, but the months don't correspond at all to the phases of the moon. Each season starts (the equinoxes and solstices) on the first day of the month, every four months.

 

And a free rep-kiss to the first person who can guess why I chose such a wierd number as 496.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Moving Calender?

 

First, decide how long the solar year is. (RW: 365.24 days)

Then decide on any subdivisions of that year, such as by a lunar cycle (months, RW lunar cycle is ~28 days).

Then decide on the calendar used by the people, which may correspond to the solar year (as the RW Gregorian calendar), or to the lunar cycles (RW Hebrew and Muslim Calendars), or even to neither (no RW examples, except due to inaccuracy).

 

Holidays can be tied to points within the solar year, or points within the lunar cycle, or both (such as Easter), or to specific days within the calendar, regardless of where they fall in the solar and lunar cycles.

 

And of course in fantasy worlds, it can be even more complicated than that, as there could be more than one lunar cycle (more than one moon), or maybe even more than one solar cycle, or maybe even some completely new cycle, variable seasons, etc.

 

Note that a week does not correspond to any real phenomenon and is seven days long in the real world because it represents approximately one-quarter of the lunar cycle. So "ideally" if you start counting days on the new moon, on the seventh day, you'll have a first half-moon, then a full moon after seven more days, and a laft half-moon after seven more days, and finally another new moon after another seven days. For better or worse, the RW lunar cycle is not exactly 28 days, so counting weeks to determine the phase of the moon won't quite work.

 

In my fantasy world, for example, the solar year is (exactly) 496 days long, and the lunar cycle is (exactly) 28 days long. I wanted the numbers to be exact for simplicity. There are two main calendars: the Neronian calendar has 18 lunar months to the year so each month begins exactly on the new moon. However, this makes the year a bit too long, so to keep the calendar in synch with the seasons, two months are left out of every seven-year period (called a "hod" or a "hod of years" in my setting). And then there's the Temnan calendar, which has a year of sixteen 31-day months, thus fitting exactly into the solar year, but the months don't correspond at all to the phases of the moon. Each season starts (the equinoxes and solstices) on the first day of the month, every four months.

 

And a free rep-kiss to the first person who can guess why I chose such a wierd number as 496.

 

Square numbers?

[Hainted]

Re: Moving Calender?

 

I've got 8 months of varying length and 13 astrological signs and figured the calender moved to represent the world's journey through the Void.As the years passed different signs would be ascending or descending and would be harbingers of the times ahead.(Maybe,I'm trying to justify it to myself beyond the "I Think it's cool phase,")