Calendar Reform

A change in an existing calendar. The calendar currently in use in most nations, the Gregorian, is the result of a calendar reform in 1582 that corrected two erroneous suppositions of the Julian calendar, which had been in use since 45 B.C.—namely that the year contains exactly 365¼ days and that 235 lunar months exactly equal 19 solar years. That revision corrected an accumulated error of 10 days and stopped the calendar from slipping farther out of line with the seasons. ( See SB , Nos. 360–363 , or any standard encyclopedia.) This article concerns itself only with those attempts to reform the calendar that have occurred during the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and that, if adopted, would have disrupted the historic cycle of the week. Calendar reform that would leave intact the weekly cycle is not the concern of the SDA Church. The church’s position was defined in a letter from the General Conference Executive Committee to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1955: “We are not opposed to calendar reform per se, but we are opposed to any change that would contribute to national or international disunity, economic perplexity, or religious confusion and distress.” Neither the Julian nor the Gregorian calendar interfered with the weekly cycle. Concerning the reform of the Julian calendar by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, we are told: “Thus, every imaginable proposition was made; only one idea was never mentioned, viz. the abandonment of the seven-day week” ( Catholic Encyclopedia , vol. 9, p. 251, art. “Lilius”). “It is to be noted that in the Christian period the order of days of the week has never been interrupted. Thus, when Gregory XIII reformed the calendar, in 1582, Thursday, 4 October, was followed by Friday, 15 October. So in England, in 1752, Wednesday, 2 September, was followed by Thursday, 14 September” ( ibid. , vol. 3, p. 740, art. “Chronology”). Among the hundreds of proposals made to improve the Gregorian calendar, only a few have received much attention. Among these are the Edwards Perpetual Calendar, devised by Lt. Com. Willard E. Edwards of the United States Navy, and the World Calendar. Both have 12 months, divided into four equal 91-day quarters of three months each, containing 30-30-31 in the Edwards Perpetual Calendar, and 31-30-30 days in the plan of the World Calendar Association. The 12 months contain 364 days, leaving one “blank day” (two in leap years) outside the count of the months and the weeks. An earlier proposal with strong backing in the 1920s and 1930s was the Moses B. Cotsworth plan, which, because of heavy financial backing by George Eastman, millionaire Kodak manufacturer, came to be called the Eastman Calendar. This calendar had 13 months, each beginning on Sunday and containing exactly four weeks (28 days), making the 13 months contain 364 days. Advantages claimed by promoters of these calendars are commercial, economic, statistical, and most recently, religious. Adoption of the World Calendar, which was aggressively promoted for a time, will, it is claimed: (1) fix the year in perpetuity; (2) retain and largely equalize the 12 months; (3) retain and equalize the half years; (4) retain and equalize the quarter years; (5) group the months uniformly within the quarters; (6) provide 13 complete weeks within each quarter and uniformly group these weeks; (7) reduce the inequality between months from as much as three days to one day, and establish an equal working month; (8) stabilize the dates of Easter, Christmas, and other religious holidays. Opponents of the World Calendar, among whom are Seventh-day Adventists, claim it will: (1) upset established religious customs and habits; (2) substitute a spurious or artificial week for the historic seven-day cycle; (3) create new religious controversy; (4) exalt materialism at the expense of religious emphasis and conscience; (5) create working difficulties for millions of conscientious observers of Sabbath and Sunday who would be forced to observe their rest days on working days of the week during most of each seven-year period; (6) compound educational problems for millions of students and teachers who would not attend classes on the seventh or the first day of the historic week. Two other calendars that have had some backing would achieve most of the objectives of the above proposals without disrupting the weekly cycle. One, called Jubilee Calendar, was proposed by Cecil L. Woods, dean (1948–1954) of Pacific Union College, Angwin, California. The Woods proposal would allow the convenient reckoning of the year at 364 days, and would insert 71 intercalary weeks into the calendar within a 400-year period, according to the following rule: A week is intercalated between the last of December and first of January at the beginning of years divisible by 5, except those ending in 25 or 75, or divisible by 400. This week would have a special name—Jubilee Week, and could be considered the first week of a Jubilee Year, but not as part of any month or of any quarter. Records for the week would be kept separately, making the rest of the year comparable to all other years of 364 days. Another Jubilee Calendar, proposed by a number of Jewish bodies, differs from Woods’s proposal in its intercalation of the 71 weeks in 400 years at intervals of five or six years in irregular sequences. The Woods plan was submitted to the World Calendar Association by Dr. Alvin W. Johnson, secretary of the International Religious Liberty Association, on Jan. 8, 1951, as a compromise plan that might secure the backing of Seventh-day Adventists and Jews and of Sundaykeeping organizations to whom the observance of a particular day is important. The principle of maintaining an unbroken weekly cycle was shrugged aside in a 15-page evaluation of the Jubilee Calendar sent to Johnson and Woods in March 1951. The report quoted Dr. Henry Smith Leiper, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches: “Shall the World Calendar, which stabilizes our days along scientific and mathematical lines, be denied to the world because of the opposition of minority groups? Must all our days continue to wander throughout the calendar in order to preventone wandering day for the opposition of the minority because of their own particular religion? “It is difficult to conceive,” said the report, “that God would choose one day as of more value and importance than another.” History. Calendar reform in the twentieth century received its impetus, fittingly, from a statistician, Moses B. Cotsworth (1859–1943). Challenged by the uneven distribution of time in the months of the Gregorian calendar, he set out to create a calendar that would lend itself to more exact comparative statistical analysis. His new calendar, described above, received its first endorsement in 1909 from the Canadian Royal Society. Encouraged, Cotsworth organized the International Fixed Calendar League, and in 1923 or 1924 secured the financial support of George Eastman. Meanwhile other individuals and organizations began to give the subject study. Notable among these were the International Astronomical Union, which in 1922 decided that some revision of the calendar was desirable, though it did not approve a specific plan of revision. About the same time the International Chamber of Commerce approved reform of the calendar and requested that the League of Nations appoint a special committee to study the problem. When in 1923 such a committee was created, calendar reformers began to send in their plans. Of the some 185 (some sources give 187) plans submitted, only three were deemed worthy of consideration. One of these was the Cotsworth plan. Determining that the next step toward calendar reform must be the arousing of widespread public interest in the question, the committee in 1926 recommended that member nations of the league appoint committees to consider calendar revision, each nation through this medium to report to an international conference at which the final form of a new calendar for the world could be adopted. The committee agreed unanimously “that no reform can be effected without the consent of all, or almost all the important bodies interested, among which ‘religious bodies’ were placed first.” In 1928 the Pan-American Union, meeting in Havana, recommended not only that member nations appoint national committees on calendar simplification but also that they hold an international conference. Thereupon, in December 1928 a resolution was introduced into the U.S. Congress authorizing the president to call such an international conference or to accept on behalf of the United States an invitation from some other nation to attend such a conference. This bill—known as House Joint Resolution 334—presented the question of revision essentially in terms of Cotsworth’s plan. When extended public hearings on the bill were held before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, SDA leaders joined with other groups to oppose endorsement of a proposal that would upset the weekly cycle. Protests against the “blank day” feature of the plan were so effective that similar resolutions introduced into the House of Representatives on 15 Mar. and Mar. 29, 1929, omitted the preamble favoring the blank day device. Neither of these resolutions was passed. No such resolution has since received public consideration either by Congress or by any of its committees. In July of 1928 a Calendar Committee was brought into existence, with George Eastman as chairman. Because the United States was not a member of the League of Nations, this committee had no official status. In October 1931 the calendar reform question was submitted to the Fourth General Conference of the Committee on Communications and Transit in Geneva. Present were 111 delegates from 42 nations. Eleven SDA leaders were present to oppose the plan: Charles S. Longacre, secretary of the International Religious Liberty Association; Jean Nussbaum, France; Arthur S. Maxwell, General Conference; L. L. Caviness and S. Rasmussen, southern Europe; R. A. Anderson, Australia; A. Vollmer, Germany; G. E. Nord and P. G. Nelson, Scandinavian countries; T. T. Babienco, Baltic States; and J. I. Robison, Southern African Division. (For an account of the proceedings, including an account of how Longacre produced a letter from Secretary of State Henry Stimson that flatly contradicted the claim of Charles F. Marvin to be the official representative of the United States government, see Nathaniel Krum, Charles S. Longacre , pp. 65–68.) The committee took no action, giving three reasons: the troubled state of the world, pronounced religious opposition, and lack of agreement among the calendar revisionists. Calendar reform from 1930 to 1960 was largely the story of one American woman, Elisabeth Achelis, and the organization she founded in 1930, the World Calendar Association of the United States. A perfervid backer of the “twelve-month equal-quarter plan,” which she rechristened the World Calendar, this woman, who claimed to have heard a voice telling her “You must work for this plan,” invested her ample fortune and talents in the cause of calendar reform. During 1930 the World Calendar Association enrolled between 2,000 and 3,000 members, and began to publish a quarterly Journal of Calendar Reform . Here was the first attempt to promote continuous study of the calendar on the broadest international basis. By 1956 the association had 10,000 members. Subsidiary organizations had been set up in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Belgium, England, Germany, France, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and elsewhere. Miss Achelis resigned as president of the association in April 1956, but only to devote fulltime to persuading American authorities to support the World Calendar proposal before the United Nations. In that year also the headmasters were transferred from New York City to Ottawa, Canada, and the organization was renamed the International World Calendar Association. Notable defeats were suffered by calendar reform backers, with defeat of two bills in the United States House of Representatives during the late 1940s. H. R. 1242, introduced on Jan. 23, 1947, by Joseph R. Farrington, delegate from Hawaii, asked Congress to approve adoption of The Edwards Perpetual Calendar for use in the United States and all its territories, effective Jan. 1, 1950. H. R. 1345, introduced into the House of Representatives on Jan. 27, 1947, by Representative John Kee of the Fifth District of West Virginia, asked Congress to approve adoption of the World Calendar. Both sponsors requested that the president place their projects before the United Nations, with the recommendation that it be approved there by the General Assembly for use in the whole world at the same date, Jan. 1, 1950. Even more crushing reverses were suffered in 1950, 1954, and 1956 before the United Nations. In 1950 the Committee of Fifteen of the United Nations declined to consider the World Calendar plan. Working with the delegates were the following SDA leaders: Jean Nussbaum for southern Europe, the Netherlands, Poland, and Haiti; Arthur S. Maxwell for the United Kingdom; G. Arthur Keough for the Middle East; C. P. Sorensen for the Far East; B. F. Perez for Mexico, Central America, and South America; H. L. Rudy for Canada; L. G. Mookerjee for Southern Asia; Frank H. Yost for the United States. In 1954 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations considered a proposal for calendar revision (the World Calendar) by India and Yugoslavia. The council, in a compromise resolution, referred the question to the governments represented in the United Nations, to “study the problem and furnish their views by some time early in 1955.” Views of the governments were then to be considered at the resumed nineteenth session in 1955. Of the 41 governments that replied to the questionnaire, only five favored the plan. This resolution set the stage for an emphatic repudiation of the World Calendar proposal. Three days before the Economic and Social Council began its twenty-first session in New York on Apr. 17, 1956, the World Calendar Association wrote the president of the council requesting that the calendar item be withdrawn from the agenda. Because of the lack of interest or the disapproval in the replies received from the nations to the questionnaires sent out by the secretary of the United Nations, the association thought it advisable to postpone discussion of the question. The council, by 15 votes to none, with three abstentions (Czechoslovakia, Canada, and the USSR ), adjourned sine die without consideration of the plan for a reform of the Gregorian calendar. The proposal for adjournment was made by the representative of the Netherlands, who said there was at present not enough support throughout the world to justify adoption of a new world calendar. Of the 33 nations that replied, three approved: Monaco (if universal), Nepal, and Thailand. Two, Yugoslavia and Iran, recommended further study. Five—Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ireland, and Paraguay—felt no study should be undertaken or proposal approved without the concurrence of the Roman Catholic Church. Twenty-five nations opposed: New Zealand, Union of South Africa, Australia, Burma, Finland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Great Britain, United States, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Canada, China, France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Lebanon, Mexico, and Syria. On Mar. 21, 1956, the United States government had presented its position through the following release from the State Department: “The United States government does not favor any action by the United Nations to revise the present calendar. This government cannot in any way promote a change of this nature, which would intimately affect every inhabitant of this country, unless such a reform were favored by a substantial majority of the citizens of the United States acting through their representatives in the Congress of the United States. There is no evidence of such support in the United States for calendar reform. Large numbers of United States citizens oppose the plan for calendar reform which is now before the Economic and Social Council. Their opposition is based on religious grounds, since the introduction of a ‘blank day’ at the end of each year would disrupt the seven-day sabbatical cycle. “Moreover, this government holds that it would be inappropriate for the United Nations, which represents many different religious and social beliefs throughout the world, to sponsor any revision of the existing calendar that would conflict with the principles of important religious faiths. “This government, furthermore, recommends that no further study of the subject should be undertaken. Such a study would require the use of manpower and funds which could be more usefully devoted to more vital and urgent tasks.” The International World Calendar Association became aware that any calendar reform must have strong religious support and shifted its tactics to emphasize the religious rather than the commercial and statistical benefits of the World Calendar. It was voted to include calendar reform on the agenda of Vatican Council II (opened 1962). Dr. Jean Nussbaum, Dr. B. B. Beach, and Dr. G. Rossi were appointed by the General Conference as a committee to watch the developments at the second Vatican Council regarding calendar reform and oppose any reform that would break the weekly cycle. The objective of the calendar reformers within the Roman Catholic Church was, basically, to stabilize the date of Easter and thus to enhance the chance of reunion, initially between the Papacy and the Eastern Orthodox churches—whose observance of Easter on a different date from that observed by the Roman Church is a stumbling block on the road to unity—and eventually with the rest of Christendom. Stabilizing the Easter date would also greatly facilitate the preparation of the various ecclesiastical calendars used by religious orders and other bodies. The reform submitted to the Central Preparatory Commission for the agenda of the council by Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, acting in his capacity as president of the Preparatory Commission for the Oriental Churches, was essentially the World Calendar plan. The suggested calendar incorporated the familiar blank days, the extra day of each year being referred to as a “World Holiday,” and the extra day of leap years as “Leap Day.” The second session of the council, by a vote of 2,058 to 9 (1 was void), rejected the blank day calendar concept, affirmed the noninterruption of the weekly cycle, and made the following recommendations in the form of amendments to the fifth chapter of the council’s schema on the liturgy, here translated from the Latin text. A Declaration of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican on Revision of the Calendar. The Second Ecumenical Sacred Council of the Vatican, recognizing the importance of the wishes expressed by many concerning the assignment of the feast of Easter to a fixed Sunday and concerning an unchanging calendar, having carefully considered the effects that could result from the introduction of a new calendar, declares as follows: 1. The sacred council would not object if the feast of Easter were assigned to a particular Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, provided that those whom it may concern, especially the brethren who are not in communion with the Apostolic See, give their assent. 2. The sacred council likewise declares that it does not oppose efforts designed to introduce a perpetual calendar into civil society. But among the various systems that are being suggested to stabilize a perpetual calendar and to introduce it into civil life, the church has no objection only in the case of those systems that retain and safeguard a seven-day week with Sunday, without the introduction of any days outside the week, so that the succession of weeks may be left intact, unless there is a question of the most serious reasons. Concerning these, the Apostolic See shall judge. Calendar reform continued to be studied at the Vatican after Vatican Council II’s action supporting the current weekly cycle. L’ Osservatore Romano ( No. 95 [31.568], p. 3, Apr. 24, 1964) advocates an intercalated day. The writer, Serafino M. Sarb, asserts intercalary days have occurred in the past. La Civilta Cattolica (Anno 115, Quaderno 2736, June 20, 1964, pp. 546–560) suggests that Christmas Day be made the “blank” day, outside the week, thereby ensuring religious observance of the extra day. In this way it was thought the disruption of the weekly cycle would not be objectionable to Christian religious authorities. Another article in L’ Osservatore Romano ( No. 155 [31.628], July 8, 1964, p. 7) reviews the calendar problem and the various suggestions without advocating any particular plan although voicing no serious objection to a blank day. The main objective of the Roman Catholic Church is to obtain a fixed date for Easter. A book, La Misura del Tempo (1969), by Prof. G. Imbrighi, a Vatican scholar, gave a history of the calendar and suggested that a “blank” day would solve the problems of the present Gregorian calendar. Pentecontad Theory . This hypothesis claims there were seven “blank” days in the early Jewish calendar before the reign of Solomon. Propounded by Prof. Julius Lewy and his wife, Dr. Hildegard Lewy, this theory was given wide circulation by Rabbi Julian Morgenstern, former president of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Dr. Morgenstern included this conjecture in material for The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible ( vol. 4, Articles “Sabbath” and “Week”). The theory, based on Lev. 23:15 , 16 , postulates seven periods of 50 days plus two weeks of festivals in each Jewish year. Each of the seven periods comprised seven weeks of 49 days, with the fiftieth day outside the weekly cycle. The World Calendar Association has given this assumption wide publicity. Congressional Proposals . Since 1965 proposals for calendar change have been introduced into each session of the United States Congress. A detailed explanation of a calendar devised by Father Evarist Kleszcz was printed in the Congressional Record of Jan. 26, 28, 1965. This calendar does not disturb the weekly cycle, but requires a “leap week” every five or six years. Bills supporting the Edwards Perpetual Calendar died in committee in the Eighty-ninth, Ninetieth, Ninety-first, and Ninety-third Congresses. Bills for the Adjusted Gregorian Calendar, invented by A. F. Beine, died in committee in the Ninety-first and Ninety-second Congresses. In 1974 Congressman Gilbert Gude (R-Md.) proposed (HR 14092) that the Ninety-third Congress appropriate $100,000 for the study of calendar improvement. The bill was not scheduled for hearings because of a lack of public interest. Weekday Renumbered . In 1971 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) of Geneva, Switzerland, recommended (Resolution R2015) “for the purpose of week numbering, the first day of the week shall be Monday.” This plan does not change the Gregorian calendar and maintains the sequence of the traditional weekly cycle without disruption. However, it does disrupt the calendrical numbering of the days of the week by designating Monday as the first day of the week, Sunday as the seventh. In the New Testament, Sunday is consistently referred to as the “first day of the week.” Several countries have officially adopted this calendrical method of numbering the days of the week. However, this has been done for commercial standardization, not for religious reasons. Monday Holidays . President Lyndon Johnson signed the “Monday Holiday” Act, June 28, 1968. Since Jan. 1, 1971, four holidays always fall on Monday. These are: President’s Day (third Monday in February), Memorial Day (last Monday in May), Columbus Day (second Monday in October), and Veterans Day (fourth Monday in October). In March 1970 the World Council of Churches called a consultation in Switzerland regarding calendar reform and fixation of the Easter date. Dr. B. B. Beach served together with the secretary of the archbishop of Canterbury as a drafter of the statement, adopted by the consultation and later approved by the WCC Central Committee, affirming support for fixing the Easter date on the second Sunday after the first Saturday in April, and opposing any civil calendar reform that would break the weekly cycle by introducing blank days. Psychology . Seventh-day Adventists feel that tampering with the calendar could prepare the minds of people for further change. While neither the “Monday Holiday” law nor the designating of Sunday as the seventh day interferes with the weekly cycle, these changes could condition minds for more substantive changes. People who have become accustomed to change may be inclined to accept even a disruptive “blank” day without critical thought. Since the middle seventies, things have been quiet on the calendar reform front. There seems to be very little public or governmental interest in this matter.