Thursday, March 5th, 2026
The above statement may not make since to you. It actually describes today's date. Let me explain.
The U.S. and much of the world use something called the Gregorian Calendar. Which is a copy of the Julian Calendar with improved leap year calculations. The months and day arrangements, for the most part, have been set for 2000ish years in the European nations. The twelve months with differing numbers of days per month with poor February being short, but getting the conciliation prize of an extra day every 4 years or so. The arrangements of differing numbers of days and that the total days in a month not being divisible by the number of days in a week cause the chaotic dance of dates and days being random-ish. August 21st could be on Monday one year and Thursday another year. This adds to the fun, chaotic nature of reality.
However, we decedents of the greeks love to instill order and hate the imperfection of nature. From this need (or other reasons) comes the International Fixed Calendar. This logical and symmetrical arrangements of days of the earth's orbit is clean, neat and orderly. We have 13 months with 28 days. Each month has four weeks exactly. The month starts on Sunday the 1st and ends on Saturday the 28th. You can know what the day is by knowing the date. The 23rd is always a Monday. The 4th is always a Wednesday. And every month has a Friday the 13th (spooky).
13 months of 28 days is 364 days. Where is that last day? It is called "Year Day" and some descriptions call it the 29th of December. I like the others where Year Day is not on any month. It is an exceptional day that stands alone. Except every leap year when we add another exceptional day, Leap Day. This is placed as the "29th" day of June. The fun bit as that these days are not in the regular week. So it goes Saturday December 28th, Year Day then Sunday January 1st.
Here is a handy image that is used to understand the Fixed Calendar. It also has helpful information about how it aligns with the Gregorian Calendar. Oh no, the Calendar industry will be mad but this is the only calendar you would ever need. Every year looks exactly like this.
I have grown to be more and more fascinated by how we humans make sense of time and try to organize the haphazard nature of the solar and lunar cycles of our fun little planet. I will be investigating this more.