Why the Modern Western Calendar Should Add 56 Years

The prospect of changing our calendar system is not appealing for most people. The economic cost of changing our annals (yearly notations) in historical documents and on monuments would reach into the billions of dollars.

And, actually, that could be quite good for the economy as long as consumers and tax-payers would be willing to dig a little deeper into their pockets (the cost would amount to a few dollars for every man, woman, and child in the United States) to fund the conversion.

The traditional religious affection for the outmoded Anno Domini system has now been fundamentally challenged by Pope Benedict XVI’s latest book on Jesus, in which the Pontiff (who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a noted Biblical scholar) endorses the idea that the current western calendar embraces a clerical error in calculating the year of Jesus’ birth.

Jesus was probably born in what the western calendar denotes as 7 or 6 BC(E). The fact that we use “BC” to denote “Before Christ” but “BCE” to denote “Before Current Era” or “Before Christian Era” in deference to non-Christian sensibilities underscores the fundamental (and completely unnecessary) struggle between idealogies that plagues our calendar system.

The western calendar is, of course, not the only one in use. Millions of Jews around the world acknowledge the current year (at the time of this writing) as the year 5773. Hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world acknowledge the current year as 1433. Since 1949 the People’s Republic of China has formally used the Gregorian Calendar (the western calendar). Japan adopted the western calendar in 1873. The oldest calendaric system may actually be the Hindu system, for which evidence suggests a 4th or 5th millennium BC(E) origin. Hence, the world is divided between its calendaric systems and there is little hope of reconciling them all.

Still, if we wish to make an adjustment, we should make one that reflects the original intention of the Gregorian Calendar or else we should pick some arbitrary point in time (perhaps associated with prehistoric research) that predates all the known calendaric years of origin (at least for the current eras of those calendars — the Hindu ages span hundreds of thousands of years).

A year-count based on the estimated age of modern humans (about 400,000 or so years) might be too vague. Too many different faiths would argue for their own years of origin. Hence, we might want to look at the calendar that is most closely related to the Gregorian Calendar — the Julian Calendar, which was initiated in the year 56 BC(E). By shifting our year count backward we eliminate the awkward relationship between the western calendar and an incorrectly calculated Christian date.

The Christian calendar does not really preserve anything necessary for the promulgation of Jesus’ message (that God offers forgiveness to everyone). It is burdened by sentimental attachment that is in conflict even with the teachings of most if not all major churches.

The Julian Calendar was flawed by miscalculating the length of the Solar Year by about 11 minutes (which is why Pope Gregory replaced it with the slightly modified calendar that took its name from him). Historians would, however, be able to make quick and easy adjustments to their year notations by extending the Gregorian calendar years backward 56 years, retaining the current leap-year system (which only adds a 1 day per each year).

But our skipped leap years would no longer fall on years ending with “00”. That is, the year 2000 would become the year 2056 and we would have to remember that the year 2156 is NOT a leap year (2000 was a leap year but 2100, 2200, and 2300 will not be).

The adjustment to keep our calendar aligned with the true Solar year doesn’t have to fall on every 4th year — we can make that adjustment whenever we wish. Historians often have to associate multiple calendar systems with the Gregorian system in any event. Dealing with Regnal calendars (they restart the year numbering with the reign of each new monarch or leader of a society) complicates historical annal analysis anyway.

The only emotional reason to hang on to the Gregorian year system was the misguided belief that it began with the year of Jesus’ birth — but for decades most Christians have understood that was not really the case. Now the church fathers are beginning to acknowledge the mistake in a formal way that removes the foundation for any religious objections to change our calendar years.

To say that Jesus was born in Julian Year 49 or 50 may make more sense to millions than to say that he was born in 7 or 6 Before Christ — the contradiction in annotation is simply absurd.

We could adopt the notation of JCY (Julian Calendar Year) and PJCY (Pre-Julian Calendar Year). The need to update our literature and historical records would launch a new generation of work that would help inspire historical research and analysis on an unprecedented scale. That research and analysis could lead to new insights into where we have been and how we arrived at our present day and situation.

But there would be considerable economic stimulus, and that can only be seen as a positive thing. To argue against making a rational change to the calendar system that creates jobs and supports new research and educational initiatives would be politically undesirable. The most conservative elements in our societies would oppose such a change simply for the political expediency of heightening fear of change. Adjusting the calendar would really pose no threat to either our economies, our societies, our faiths, or our political structures.

The straw man arguments that would be raised against changing the calendar should thus fall by the wayside quickly. And finally, after almost 2,000 years of remembering an event that never happened (or, rather, which happened in a very different year) we could move on and work with a calendar that makes more sense.