By Hal 2001, as told to Ron Goodman  

The word calendar is from the Latin kalends. A calendar is used to calculate time. It also names days and months, so you know when you have to go to the dentist; next Tuesday.
 
The discipline of the calendar is unrelenting; days, months and years are named and numbered. Dates are applied backwards, from the beginning of time and forward toward infinity. On Jan. 1, 2000, many people feel we will reach a significant step in the progress of time because of how computer calendars were programmed to remember time. Let’s see.
 
Most calendars are based on two cycles in nature: the sun and the moon. Unfortunately someone neglected to coordinate them. The solar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. The moons cycle is 29.5 days - 12 lunar months come to more than 354 days, 8 hours and 48 minutes.
 
Because none of this worked, the ancients invented the device of intercalation. Intercalation is the insertion of a day, several days or months in the calendar. The surplus of solar days (365.2 over lunar days (354.4) can be somewhat rectified every three years by adding a month of 33 days or adding an intercalary month.
 
The Egyptians, borrowing from the Mesopotamian’s, created the finest earliest calendar, 12 months of 30 days each. Adding five extra days a year and an additional day every four years made it all work. 
 
The Romans had to fiddle with the Egyptian calendar. They decreed 10 months of 29 days each; later on, January (29 days) and February (28 days), were added. The trouble was that every four years there were four extra days. 
 
Around 200 BCE the pontifex maximus, (the official head of the Roman religion), was given the power to adjust the calendar. He began using intercalation’s for political purposes, to lengthen the terms of officers who were his friends. By the time Julius Caesar was emperor, January had become an autumn month. 
 
In addition to being emperor, Julius Caesar appointed himself pontifex maximus and decreed the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar had 365 days and 6 hours, a little too long. By the 16th century the vernal equinox had moved from Mar. 21, where it belongs, to Mar. 11. 
 
This so distressed Pope Gregory XIII that he suppressed 10 days in 1582, adjusted all future leap years and ordained the Gregorian calendar. One example of the change the new calendar brought about was that while the Julian calendar year had begun on Mar. 25, the new Gregorian calendar year begins on Jan. 1.
 
Because of political and religious reasons, British were slow to jump on the Gregorian 
calendar bandwagon. In 1752 they suddenly realized that they were 11 days behind (and a long swim from) the continent so they finally adopted the new calendar too. The effects spread rapidly across the Atlantic and resulted in some interesting changes. George Washington’s birthday, Feb. 11, 1731, (Julian) became February 22, 1732, (Gregorian). Washington apparently became a year younger in 11 days.
 
In the early part of this century the Russian Orthodox Church was still using the older, Julian calendar. Interestingly, this caused the Russian 1917 October revolution to actually have taken place in November.

Other Cultures Calculate Dates
 
The Jewish calendar is another attempt to adjust the lunar and solar cycles. The intercalation is arranged to take place seven times in 19 years, which works out to an adjustment every 2.714 years. Perhaps this explains why the Hebrews wandered in the desert for 40 years. They were deciding where to insert the 30-day intercalate month of Nisan.
 
The Moslems use a lunar calendar and the years vary from 354 to 355 days. The months and seasons are not related and there are about 33 Moslem years to 32 years in our calendar. Moslems, apparently, live longer but experience shorter years.
 
The Chinese year is arranged in six 60-day cycles. The years were grouped in major cycles of five and 60 years. In the fifth century BCE they calculated, by abacus, no doubt, that the solar year was 365.2444 days long and the month contained 29.53059 days. The Chinese adjusted the yearly cycles by intercalary months and shorter periods.
 
The Mayans and Aztecs used a year of 365 days. They never made adjustments. Rather, the feasts and other dates were adjusted to the calendar. 

When Why 2 K?

This year is numbered 5760 in the Jewish calendar. That would relocate the Y2K problem to the year 2,241 BCE, which may explain why the Pharaoh let the ancient Hebrews emigrate.
The Chinese calendar labels this year as the lunar year of the rabbit, 4697. The Y2K year in China would have been 1302 BCE, during the Chop Su Yee dynasty. (And we all know how mixed-up that is.)
 
Scholars now question the birth date of Jesus, the year zero for the Gregorian calendar. His birth date may have been as much as four years earlier than originally thought. Stated another way Y2K may have passed, in 1996.
 
But what about the computers you ask. Isn’t that the real problem? I don’t know about you dear reader but mine is fully prepared for y**juoptp fi;em[]amdk!!