What calendar do we use? Gregorian calendar.
We Orthodox Christians live according to the Gregorian calendar, i.e. according to the old style. The Catholic world lives according to the Julian calendar. Unlike the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar takes into account only one object - the Sun.
The Gregorian calendar is based on the fraction 97/400, i.e. There are 97 leap years in the 400-year cycle.
The word calendar itself comes from the Latin Calendae, which means “time for paying debts.” Kalends began each month of the Roman civil calendar, established by Numa Pompilius and which became the prototype for the subsequent Julian and Gregorian calendars. The most important Kalends during the year were, of course, the January Kalends, with which the new year of the Roman calendar actually began. On January 1, in Rome, consuls replaced each other at the highest state post, transferring to their successors the affairs and debts of the state. Now people no longer think about the fact that January 1 is the time for the necessary payment of debts and interest, and celebrating the New Year on the day of debt payment dooms those celebrating to constant dependence on the state, which has placed all citizens in the position of debtors. Living according to the Gregorian or Julian calendar means recognizing oneself as a debtor and bearing the burden of responsibility for what we cannot change.
It is known that for two centuries the New Year was celebrated in the Russian state on September 1st.
Peter I decided to equalize the Russian chronology with the European one, and ordered that instead of January 1, 7208, “from the creation of the world,” January 1, 1700, “from the birth of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ,” should be counted. The civil new year was also moved to January 1. The year 1699 was the shortest for Russia: from September to December, i.e. 4 months. However, not wanting conflicts with adherents of antiquity and the church, the tsar made a reservation in the decree: “And if anyone wants to write both those years, from the creation of the world and from the birth of Christ, freely.”
Subsequently, there was a transition to the Gregorian style. Prince Lieven, the Minister of Public Education, wrote about this event in 1830: “due to the ignorance of the masses, the inconveniences associated with the reform will far exceed the expected benefits.”
By decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 26, 1918, it was approved that after January 31 it was no longer February 1, but immediately the 14th.
The modern world lives according to different calendars. Here are some of them.
Thus, in Vietnam, Kampuchea, China, Korea, Mongolia, Japan and some other Asian countries, the eastern calendar has been in effect for several millennia. It was compiled during the time of the legendary Emperor Huang Di in the middle of the third millennium BC. This calendar is a 60-year cyclical system and is very different from the European number system. It is based on the astronomical cycles of the Sun, Earth, Moon, Jupiter and Saturn. The 60-year cycle includes the 12-year Jupiter and 30-year Saturn cycles. The 12-year period of Jupiter was considered the most important for the life of nomads, and in those days the main peoples of the East were nomadic tribes. The ancient Chinese and Japanese believed that the normal motion of Jupiter brought benefits and virtues.
In countries professing Islam, the Slamic calendar (or Hijri) is a purely lunar calendar. The year contains 12 synodic months and its length is only 12*29.53=354.36 days. The calendar is based on the Koran (Sura IX, 36-37) and its observance is a sacred duty of Muslims.
The Islamic calendar is the official calendar of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. The rest of the Muslim countries use it only for religious purposes and Gregorian as the official one.
There is also a Jewish calendar. It is the Jewish religious calendar and the official calendar of Israel. This is a combined solar-lunar calendar, in which the year coincides with the tropical one and the months with the synodic ones.
A regular year consists of 353, 354 or 355 days - 12 months, a leap year of 383, 384 or 385 days - 13 months. They are respectively called “incomplete”, “correct” and “complete”.
As is known, the Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar in its worship, while the Russian state, along with most countries, has been using the Gregorian calendar for some time now. At the same time, both in the Church itself and in society, voices are heard from time to time calling for a transition to a new style.
The arguments of the defenders of the Julian calendar, which can be found in the Orthodox press, mainly come down to two. The first argument: the Julian calendar has been sanctified by centuries of use in the Church, and there are no compelling reasons to abandon it. The second argument: when switching to the “new style” while maintaining the traditional Paschalia (the system for calculating the date of Easter), many inconsistencies arise, and violations of the liturgical Rules are inevitable.
Both of these arguments are quite convincing for an Orthodox believer. However, they do not seem to relate to the Julian calendar as such. After all, the Church did not create a new calendar, but adopted the one that already existed in the Roman Empire. What if the calendar were different? Perhaps then it would be precisely that other calendar that would have been consecrated for liturgical use, and it would have been with this in mind that the Easter calendar would have been compiled?
This article is an attempt to consider some aspects of the calendar problem, providing the reader with material for independent reflection. The author does not consider it necessary to hide his sympathy for the Julian calendar, but he is aware that it is impossible to prove its superiority in any way. Just as the advantage of the liturgical Church Slavonic language over Russian or the icons of St. Andrey Rublev in front of Raphael's painting.
The presentation will be carried out in three stages: first, brief conclusions, then a more detailed mathematical justification, and, finally, a short historical sketch.
Any natural phenomenon can be used to measure time and compile a calendar if it repeats evenly and periodically: the change of day and night, the change of phases of the Moon, seasons, etc. All these phenomena are associated with certain astronomical objects. In the book of Genesis we read: And God said: let there be lights in the firmament of heaven for... times, and days, and years... And God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars(Gen. 1, 14-16). The Julian calendar is compiled taking into account the three main astronomical objects - the Sun, Moon and stars. This gives grounds to consider it a truly biblical calendar.
Unlike the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar takes into account only one object - the Sun. It is designed in such a way that the point of the vernal equinox (when the lengths of day and night are equal) would deviate as slowly as possible from the date of March 21. At the same time, the connection between the calendar and the Moon and stars was destroyed; in addition, the calendar became more complex and lost its rhythm (compared to the Julian calendar).
Let's look at one property of the Julian calendar that is most often criticized. In the Julian calendar, the vernal equinox moves backward along calendar dates at a rate of approximately 1 day every 128 years. (In general, the difference between the dates of the Julian and Gregorian calendars is currently 13 days and increases by 3 days every 400 years.) This means, for example, that the day of the birth of Christ, December 25, will eventually move to spring. But, firstly, this will happen in about 6000 years, and secondly, even now in the southern hemisphere, Christmas is celebrated not even in the spring, but in the summer (since December, January and February are the summer months there).
Taking into account all of the above, we can conclude that the statement “the Gregorian calendar is more accurate than the Julian calendar” is far from indisputable. Everything here is determined by accuracy criteria, and they can be different.
To substantiate the above statements, we present some astronomical and arithmetic arguments and facts.
One of the main periods of time for us is a year. But it turns out there are several different “types” of year. Let us mention two that are most important for our considerations.
- Sidereal, or sidereal, year. This is what they mean when they say that the Sun passes through twelve zodiac signs in a year. For example, St. Basil the Great (IV century) in “Conversations on the Sixth Day” writes: “The solar year is the return of the Sun, due to its own movement, from a certain sign to the same sign.”
- Tropical year. It takes into account the changing seasons on Earth.
The Julian year averages 365.25 days, that is, it is between the sidereal and tropical years. The Gregorian year averages 365.2425 days, which is very close to the tropical year.
In order to better understand the aesthetics and logic of the calendar, it is useful to shed some light on the problems that arise when creating it. Strictly speaking, building a calendar includes two fairly independent procedures. The first is empirical in nature: it is necessary to measure the duration of astronomical cycles as accurately as possible. (Note that the durations of the sidereal and tropical years were found with great accuracy in the 2nd century BC by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus.) The second procedure is purely theoretical: based on the observations made, create a time measurement system that, on the one hand, would deviate as little as possible from the chosen cosmic landmarks, and on the other hand, would not be very cumbersome and complex.
Let, for example, you want to create a calendar focused on the tropical year (after the duration of the latter is measured - 365.24220 days). It is clear that each year of such a calendar must contain either 365 or 366 days (in the latter case, the year is called a leap year). In this case, we must try to ensure that, firstly, the average number of days in a year is as close as possible to 365.2422 and, secondly, that the rule for alternating common and leap years is as simple as possible. In other words, it is necessary to determine a cycle lasting N years, of which M will be leap years. In this case, firstly, the fraction m/n should be as close as possible to 0.2422, and secondly, the number N should be as small as possible.
These two requirements contradict each other, since accuracy is achieved only at the cost of increasing the number N. The simplest solution to the problem is the fraction 1/4, on which the Julian calendar is based. The cycle consists of four years, every fourth year (the serial number of which is completely divisible by 4) is a leap year. The Julian year averages 365.25 days, which is 0.0078 days longer than the tropical year. In this case, an error of one day accumulates over 128 years (0.0078 x 128 ~ 1).
The Gregorian calendar is based on the fraction 97/400, i.e. There are 97 leap years in the 400-year cycle. Leap years are considered to be years whose serial number is either divisible by 4 and not divisible by 100, or divisible by 400. The Gregorian year averages 365.2425 days, which is 0.0003 days longer than the length of the tropical year. In this case, an error of one day accumulates over 3333 years (0.0003 x 3333 ~ 1).
From the above it is clear that the advantage of the Gregorian calendar over the Julian calendar is debatable even as it is focused only on the tropical year - accuracy is achieved at the cost of complexity.
Let us now consider the Julian and Gregorian calendars from the point of view of correlation with the Moon.
The change in phases of the Moon corresponds to a synodic, or lunar, month, which is 29.53059 days. During this time, all phases of the moon change - new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter. A whole number of months cannot fit into one year without a remainder, therefore, to construct almost all existing lunar-solar calendars, a 19-year cycle was used, named after the Greek astronomer Meton (5th century BC). In this cycle the relation is fulfilled
19 years ~ 235 synodic months,
that is, if the beginning of a certain year coincides with the appearance of a new Moon in the sky, then this coincidence will take place 19 years later.
If the year is Gregorian (365.2425 days), then the error of the Metonic cycle is
235 x 29.53059 - 19 x 365.2425 ~ 0.08115.
For the Julian year (365.25 days) the error is smaller, namely
235 x 29.53059 - 19 x 365.25 ~ 0.06135.
Thus, we find that the Julian calendar is better correlated with changes in the phases of the Moon (see also: Klimishin I.A. Calendar and chronology. - 3rd ed., revised and supplemented. - M., Nauka, 1990. - P. 92 ).
In general, the Julian calendar is a combination of simplicity, rhythm (a cycle lasting only 4 years), harmony (correlation with the Sun, Moon and stars). It is also worth mentioning its practicality: the same number of days in each century and the continuous counting of time for two millennia (disrupted during the transition to the Gregorian calendar) simplify astronomical and chronological calculations.
Two surprising circumstances are associated with the Julian calendar. The first circumstance is astronomical - the proximity of the fractional part of the length of the year (both sidereal and tropical) to such a simple fraction 1/4 (we suggest that the reader familiar with the methods of testing statistical hypotheses calculate the corresponding probability). However, the second circumstance is even more surprising - for all its merits, the Julian calendar was never used anywhere until the 1st century. BC
The predecessor of the Julian calendar can be considered the calendar that was used in Egypt for many centuries. In the Egyptian calendar, each year contained exactly 365 days. Of course, the error of this calendar was very large. For about one and a half thousand years, the day of the vernal equinox “ran through” all the numbers of the calendar year (which consisted of 12 months of 30 days and five additional days).
Around 1700 BC, the northern part of the Nile Delta came under the rule of the nomadic Hyksos tribes. One of the Hyksos rulers who made up the XV Dynasty of Egypt carried out a calendar reform. After 130 years, the Hyksos were expelled, the traditional calendar was restored, and since then, each pharaoh, upon ascending the throne, swore an oath not to change the length of the year.
In 238 BC, Ptolemy III Euergetes, who ruled in Egypt (a descendant of one of the military leaders of Alexander the Great), tried to carry out a reform by adding an additional day every 4 years. This would make the Egyptian calendar almost identical to the Julian calendar. However, for unknown reasons, the reform was not implemented.
And now the time of the incarnation and the founding of the Church has approached. Some of the participants in the events described by the evangelists have already walked the land of Palestine. From January 1, 45 BC, a new calendar was introduced in the Roman Empire by order of Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44). This calendar, now called the Julian calendar, was developed by a group of Alexandrian astronomers led by Sosigenes. From then until the 16th century, that is, approximately 1600 years, Europe lived according to the Julian calendar.
In order not to deviate from our topic, we will not consider the calendar systems of different countries and peoples. Note that some of them are quite unsuccessful (one of the worst, it seems, was the calendar used in the Roman Empire before the introduction of the Julian). Let us mention only one calendar, interesting in that its calendar year is closer to the tropical one than that of the Gregorian calendar created later. From 1079 to the middle of the 19th century. In Iran, the Persian calendar was in use, developed by a commission led by the scientist and poet Omar Khayyam (1048-1123). The Persian calendar is based on the fraction 8/33, i.e. the cycle is 33 years, of which 8 are leap years. The 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, 20th, 24th, 28th and 32nd years of the cycle were leap years. The average length of the year in the Persian calendar is 365.24242 days, which is 0.00022 more than in the tropical one. An error of one day accumulates over 4545 years (0.00022 x 4545 ~ 1).
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar. During the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, 10 days were thrown out, i.e. after October 4, October 15 came immediately. The calendar reform of 1582 caused many protests (in particular, almost all universities in Western Europe spoke out against it). Nevertheless, Catholic countries, for obvious reasons, almost immediately switched to the Gregorian calendar. Protestants did this gradually (for example, Great Britain - only in 1752).
In November 1917, immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, the question of the calendar was brought up for discussion by the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. On January 24, 1918, the “Decree on the introduction of the Western European calendar in the Russian Republic” was adopted.
Local Orthodox Churches adhered to the Julian calendar until the 20s of the 20th century, when the Ecumenical (Constantinople) Patriarchate abandoned it. The main purpose of this decision was, apparently, the celebration of Christian holidays together with Catholics and Protestants.
Over the next decades, the new style was adopted by the majority of Local Churches, and formally the transition was made not to the Gregorian, but to the so-called New Julian calendar, based on the fraction 218/900. However, until 2800 it completely coincides with the Gregorian.
It is expressed in the joint celebration of Easter and the so-called moving holidays associated with it (the only exception is the Finnish Orthodox Church, which celebrates Easter on the same day as Western Christians). The date of Easter is calculated according to a special lunisolar calendar, inextricably linked with the Julian calendar. In general, the method of calculating the date of Easter is the most important point of comparison between the Julian and Gregorian calendars as church calendars. However, this topic, which requires both scientific and theological consideration, is beyond the scope of this article. Let us only note that the creators of the Orthodox Easter achieved the same goal as the creators of the Julian calendar - the greatest possible simplicity with a reasonable level of accuracy.
We have been using a calendar all our lives. This seemingly simple table of numbers with the days of the week has a very ancient and rich history. The civilizations known to us already knew how to divide the year into months and days. For example, in ancient Egypt, based on the pattern of movement of the Moon and Sirius, a calendar was created. A year was approximately 365 days and was divided into twelve months, which in turn were divided into thirty days.
Innovator Julius Caesar
Around 46 BC. e. There was a transformation of chronology. The Roman Emperor Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar. It was slightly different from the Egyptian one: the fact is that, instead of the Moon and Sirius, the sun was taken as a basis. The year was now 365 days and six hours. The first of January was considered the beginning of the new time, and Christmas began to be celebrated on January 7.
In connection with this reform, the Senate decided to thank the emperor by naming one month in his honor, which we know as “July.” After the death of Julius Caesar, the priests began to confuse the months, the number of days - in a word, the old calendar no longer resembled the new one. Every third year was considered a leap year. From 44 to 9 BC there were 12 leap years, which was not true.
After Emperor Octavian Augustus came to power, there were no leap years for sixteen years, so everything returned to normal, and the situation with chronology was corrected. In honor of Emperor Octavian, the eighth month was renamed from Sextilis to Augustus.
When the question arose about the purpose of celebrating Easter, disagreements began. It was this issue that was resolved at the Ecumenical Council. No one has the right to change the rules that were established at this Council to this day.
Innovator Gregory XIII
In 1582, Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar.. The movement of the vernal equinox was the main reason for the changes. It was according to this that the day of Easter was calculated. At the time the Julian calendar was introduced, this day was considered March 21, but around the 16th century, the difference between the tropical and Julian calendars was about 10 days, therefore, March 21 changed to 11.
In 1853 in Constantinople, the Council of Patriarchs criticized and condemned the Gregorian calendar, according to which the Catholic Holy Sunday was celebrated before the Jewish Passover, which ran counter to the established rules of the Ecumenical Councils.
Differences between old and new style
So, how does the Julian calendar differ from the Gregorian calendar?
- Unlike Gregorian, Julian was adopted much earlier, and it is 1 thousand years older.
- At the moment, the old style (Julian) is used to calculate the celebration of Easter among Orthodox Christians.
- The chronology created by Gregory is much more accurate than the previous one and will not be subject to changes in the future.
- A leap year according to the old style is every fourth year.
- In Gregorian, years that are divisible by four and end in two zeros are not leap years.
- All church holidays are celebrated according to the new style.
As we can see, the difference between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar is obvious not only in terms of calculations, but also in popularity.
This raises an interesting question. What calendar do we live by now?
The Russian Orthodox Church uses Julian, which was adopted during the Ecumenical Council, while Catholics use Gregorian. Hence the difference in the dates of celebrating the Nativity of Christ and Easter. Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7, following the decision of the Ecumenical Council, and Catholics celebrate December 25.
These two chronology were named - old and new style of calendar.
The area where the old style is used is not very large: the Serbian, Georgian, Jerusalem Orthodox Churches.
As we see, after the introduction of the new style, the life of Christians around the world changed. Many happily accepted the changes and began to live by it. But there are also those Christians who are faithful to the old style and live according to it even now, albeit in very small quantities.
There will always be disagreements between Orthodox and Catholics, and this has nothing to do with the old or new style of chronology. The Julian and Gregorian calendars - the difference is not in faith, but in the desire to use one or another calendar.
Page 2
Calendar.
The calendar we currently use was created as a result of a long search; there have been more than 200 of them throughout human history.
Already at the first stage of the development of civilization, some peoples began to use lunar calendars.
These calendars alternated months of 29 and 30 days. The new moon has always been considered the beginning of the month. But from one new moon to the next, approximately 29 1/2 days pass - this is the periodicity of the phase changes of the Moon associated with its revolution around the Earth. With this calendar, the length of a year of 12 “lunar” months is only 354 days.
IN solar calendar
The basis is the duration of the tropical year, i.e., the time interval between two successive passages of the center of the Sun through the point of the vernal equinox. The tropical year is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46.1 seconds. Since the number of days in a year cannot be fractional, in all calendars it was conventionally accepted that a year contains 365 days, and every fourth (leap) year - 1 day more (5 hours 48 minutes 46.1 s x 4 g ~ 24 hours) .
In Ancient Egypt in the 5th millennium BC. e. a calendar was introduced that was consistent with the changing seasons and consisted of 12 months of 30 days each and an additional 5 days at the end of the year. Such a calendar gave an annual lag of 1/4 day, or 1 year in 1460 years.
The immediate predecessor of the modern calendar was developed in Ancient Rome by order of Emperor Julius Caesar and was therefore called Julian calendar.
The year, according to this calendar, consisted of 12 months containing 365 or 366 days. Extra days were added every four years, such years were called leap years.
Taking into account leap years, the length of the year according to the Julian calendar differed from the length of the tropical year by only 11 minutes 14 seconds, which gave an error of 1 day in 128 years or 3 days in about 400 years. The Julian calendar was adopted as Christian in 325 AD. e., and by the second half of the 16th century. The discrepancy has already reached 10 days.
In order to correct the situation, Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 introduced the so-called new style - Gregorian calendar.
A year according to the Gregorian calendar turns out to be on average half a minute longer than the tropical one, so the discrepancy over 400 years is only 2 hours 53 minutes, or a day over 3300 years.
It was decided, in order to reduce the difference between the calendar year and the tropical year, to remove 3 days from the count every 400 years by reducing the number of leap years. It was agreed to consider all years of centuries to be simple, not leap years, with the exception of those whose number of centuries is divisible by 4 without a remainder. The years 1600 and the end of the 20th century were considered leap years. 2000 At the same time 1700, 1800 and 1900 were simple.
In Russia, the new style was introduced only on February 1, 1918. By this time, a difference of 13 days had accumulated between it and the old style. This difference will remain until 2100, which according to the old style should have been considered a leap year, and according to the new style - simple. The difference between the old and the new style is usually indicated when we are dealing with events relating to the past. So, for example, we say that K. E. Tsiolkovsky was born on September 5 (17), 1857.
Years are numbered according to both the new and old styles from the year of the Nativity of Christ. In Russia, a new era was introduced by a decree of Peter I, according to which, after December 31, 7208, “from the creation of the world” came January 1, 1700.
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The calendar is a number system for large periods of time, based on the periodicity of the visible movements of celestial bodies.
The basis of the modern solar calendar is the tropical year - the period of time by the time the earth returns to the point of the vernal equinox equal to 365.2422196 average solar days.
The modern calendar is called the Gregorian (new style), which was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and replaced the Julian calendar (old style), which had been in use since the 45th century BC.
In the Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar, the average length of the year in an interval of four years was 365.25 days, which is 11 minutes 14 seconds longer than the tropical year. Over time, the onset of seasonal phenomena according to the Julian calendar occurred on increasingly earlier dates. Particularly strong discontent was caused by the constant shift in the date of Easter, associated with the spring equinox. In 325, the Council of Nicaea decreed a single date for Easter for the entire Christian church.
In subsequent centuries, many proposals were made to improve the calendar. The proposals of the Neapolitan astronomer and physician Aloysius Lilius and the Bavarian Jesuit Christopher Clavius were approved by Pope Gregory XIII. On February 24, 1582, he issued a bull (message) introducing two important additions to the Julian calendar: 10 days were removed from the 1582 calendar - after October 4, October 15 immediately followed. This measure made it possible to preserve March 21 as the date of the vernal equinox. In addition, three out of every four century years were to be considered ordinary years and only those divisible by 400 were leap years.
The year 1582 was the first year of the Gregorian calendar, called the new style.
The Gregorian calendar was introduced at different times in different countries. The first countries to switch to the new style in 1582 were Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, France, Holland and Luxembourg. Then in the 1580s it was introduced in Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary. In the 17th century, the Gregorian calendar began to be used in Germany, Norway, Denmark, in the 18th century - in the Northern Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden and Finland, in the 19th century - in Japan. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Gregorian calendar was introduced in China, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Turkey, Egypt and Greece.
In Russia, the Gregorian calendar was introduced after the October Revolution of 1917 - from February 14, 1918. The Russian Orthodox Church, preserving traditions, lives according to the Julian calendar.
The difference between the old and new styles is: 11 days for the 18th century, 12 days for the 19th century, 13 days for the 20th and 21st centuries.
Although the Gregorian calendar is accurate, it accumulates an error of 0.0003 days per year, which is three days every 10 thousand years. The Gregorian calendar also does not take into account the slowing rotation of the Earth, which lengthens the day by 0.6 seconds per 100 years.
The modern structure of the Gregorian calendar also does not fully meet the needs of social life. Chief among its shortcomings is the variability of the number of days and weeks in months, quarters and half-years.
There are four main problems with the Gregorian calendar:
- Theoretically, the civil (calendar) year should have the same length as the astronomical (tropical) year. However, this is impossible, since the tropical year does not contain an integer number of days. Because of the need to add extra days to the year from time to time, there are two types of years - ordinary and leap years. Since the year can begin on any day of the week, this gives seven types of ordinary years and seven types of leap years - a total of 14 types of years. To fully reproduce them you need to wait 28 years.
- The length of the months varies: they can contain from 28 to 31 days, and this unevenness leads to certain difficulties in economic calculations and statistics.
- Neither ordinary nor leap years contain an integer number of weeks. Semi-years, quarters and months also do not contain a whole and equal number of weeks.
- From week to week, from month to month and from year to year, the correspondence of dates and days of the week changes, so it is difficult to establish the moments of various events.
Projects for introducing a new calendar throughout the world were discussed at the UN in 1954, but the resolution of the issue was postponed.