The Rational Calendar

Tired of holidays falling on different days of the week year after year? So is former NASA astrophysicist Richard Conn Henry. That's why he designed the so-called rational calendar:

Irritated with inconsistency and beguiled by the possibilities of a steady-schedule world — “Every institution in the world has to change their calendar. Sports schedules. Every company. The dates of holidays have to be reset. And it’s all totally unnecessary,” he said — Henry went to work. [...]

According to Richard Conn Henry’s calendar, eight months would each have 30 days. Every third month would have 31 days. Every so often, to account for the leftover time, a whole extra week would be added.

The upshot: Years would proceed with clockwork regularity, with no annual re-jiggering of schedules required. Each day would occupy the same position as it had the previous year and would in the next. Were this 364-day calendar, known officially as the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, adopted on the first day of 2012, both Christmas and New Year’s Day would forever fall on Sunday.

Brandon Keim of Wired Science has more: Link


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I must oppose this for simple, personal reasons - it gets rid of my birthday! On one hand, it'd be great if it meant I was never going to age (which it doesn't..), but on the other, no more cake or parties for me! And I know I wouldn't be the only one with this issue so how do we deal with all of the people who have had their birthday 'removed'? Do I get to pick a new one? Or would we be doomed to having to have both calendars side-by-side forever to see when we were actually a year older? That doesn't seem all that efficient or easy to me...
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Isn't Samoa skipping a Friday this year? I'm sure we could all manage it if we tried really hard. I quite like the idea of the regularity, but we'd have to redo the "30 days has September..." rhyme!

@XsTatiC in Australia we do a "near enough is good enough" with seasons and have the same start day each year. Summer is December to February, Autumn: March to May, Winter: June to August, Spring: September to November. So maybe you could just adopt our method. It's much easier and it's not like the actual weather pays any attention to what season anyone says it is.
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Good Friday's always on Friday. Easter's always on Sunday.
There are some things that we can control without having to rejig the calendar that we've used for two milennia with only one large change since Julius Caesar.

Besides, why would we want to change the current system? It's kinda fun the way it is. If you really want to celebrate Christmas on Sunday, just have it on the first Sunday after December 25, and celebrate New Year's the first Sunday after January 1.
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If we're talking about the politics of replacing the Gregorian calendar, there's one obvious starting point: the Vatican. Since the Roman Catholic church is the source for the latest calendar in the Western World, the christian holidays are fixed on it (except for Easter, which considers the moon and the week cycles). My own culture uses a Lunar/Solar calendar and so we only have the seasonal holidays, but not the Gregorian dates. See also religions that use the Julian calendar for their holidays, which seem to drift very slowly on the Gregorian calendar.
So, if you want to switch to this calendar AND not join the Hindu/Muslim/Jewish experience in America (have to check my dual calendar to find out "regular" date of next holiday), you should start by selling this idea to the pope, then the rest of the Western churches, so your Christmas really stays fixed.
And if I celebrated Christmas, I'd want it fixed on Mondays so I get a long weekend. Just sayin'.
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