Calendar Uses – Then & Now

When you think calendar you probably visualize that thing that hangs on the wall with all the numbers on it and a cool picture. But a calendar is so much more than that and it has many uses that far exceed what we generally use a calendar for.

The calendar dates back to the Chinese. The Romans, Greeks, Mayan, and Aztec all had a very sophisticated calendar system that was used to predict summer solstice, eclipses, phases of the moon, sunrises, and sunsets. Things we still find on our modern calendars.

The historical calendars were remarkably accurate and a tool that was used a great deal by ancients. The modern calendar of today is the Gregorian calendar which is also sometimes called the Christian calendar. It was proposed by a Naples physician named Aloysius Lilius and adopted by Pope Gregory XIII and the Council of Trent back in 1582.

The Gregorian calendar is based on the tropical year which is approx 365 days thus it takes around 3300 years for the tropical year to shift by just one day which was accounted for by having 97 leap years every 400 years.

So what exactly is the modern Gregorian calendar used for? Actually more than you might actually realize. In fact we take the calendar so much for granted we often don’t stop to think about its uses.

The calendar helps us keep track of the seasons and the months. It tracks our lives day by day. It keeps our modern world organized in what otherwise be chaos. The calendar breaks our year into 12 months so that we can physically see what part of the year we are in.

The calendar tracks special days such as Christmas and Easter. In fact one of the reasons for the switch from the Julian calendar for the Gregorian calendar was that Easter moved around. The modern calendar tracks holidays, important dates, as well as the cycle of the moon. But what do we as individuals actually use our calendar for?

We use calendars to determine our work schedules, appointments we might have, meetings we must attend, and to remind of us of important family and friend events such as birthdays and anniversaries.

We will write on our calendar important information so that at a glance we know what our week or our day entails. And in our modern world we have many different calendars to choose from. We have the traditional wall calendar which almost everyone has a least one of. We also have day timers or day planners which we carry with us. They are in the form of a book with each page dedicated to one day of the year making it easy to write our daily activities and appointments in a logical order.

There are also electronic calendars that are found on our computers, cell phones, and PDAs. Electronic calendars have become very popular because they are convenient and easy to use. You can also make changes quickly without having to white out or erase previous information.

And our modern calendar often becomes a work of art too. These days you can buy all kinds of fabulous calendars. Robert Bateman and Salvador Dali are two artists that have seen their works on calendars. So if you can’t afford the originals you can still get a great collection on your calendar and enjoy a new scene every month.

You can also buy calendars with your favorite anything – from your favorite television show to your favorite animal. There are so many choices it can be difficult to pick your favorite.

The modern calendar is functional and fun and in our busy lives there are a quite literally thousands of calendar uses!

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.