Calendars in Your World

[TrustMeImRudy]

So for the most part I don't deal with Calendars and solar, lunar years, etc, I just use our Gregorian one and maybe change the names or just don't reference it at all. But with my WIP I wanted to try a different calendar without really changing too much since my limited knowledge would result in something broken Im sure. So I'd love to hear the calendar's you all use, as well as advice on which I should use that approximates our real calendars, since in my WIP it is possibly the same planet earth in a forgotten age.

For my own, I'm considering the World Calendar, making Worldsday and Leapyearday into actual religious holidays, kind of how the Ancient Egyptians viewed five days of each year to be outside of time. What about you all? Wanna give us some examples?

 

[ThinkerX]

I decided to keep things simple on my world:

12 months of 28 days each (four weeks of seven days), plus four extra days, NOT part of any month or week, corresponding to the equinoxes and solistices...which are major secular and religious holidays. Seventh day of the week (equivilent of Sunday) is a day of rest and 'church day type deal.

As to the names of the months, well the dominant culture is descended from displaced romans, and the the names of the roman calender months are often very close to what we use now.

 

[Asura Levi]

I would say go simple, building a calendar is headache unless you really love math (I like math and got some headache), specially if you leave the 'standard' one moon and one sun.

If you want to try different things, I would suggest you to take a pick in what wikipedia has to say about it, that had being plenty of different calendars used all around the ages so far.

 

[TrustMeImRudy]

Thinker, thats what I was thinking of originally, very similar to the Egyptian one, but if it has the same orbit as Earth there is a lot of drift per year, so the holidays are all on different dates each year, like ours going along like 'the first monday of november' or so and so,do you just not worry about it?

Asura yeah, I think I will just use the World calendar that is very simple, I actually just chose it from Wikipedia.
But I'm genuinely curious what other people who understand the lunar, solar, lunisolar deal and care to figure it out are doing in their worlds.

 

[Svrtnsse]

For the planetary(?) calendar I just copied it straight from the real world: 365 days, to a year etc. I haven't had reason to name the months ye, but I'll probably go with the same as in the real world. It's what I did with the weekdays when they needed mentioning at some point.
There's an exception though (of course). The Anfylk race are using an 8 day week instead of a 7 day week. I also made up different names for the days of the anfylk week and tried to come up with different reasons for the names.
The 8th day is Choresday which is between the working day and the weekend and which is dedicated to doing chores around the home, so that the weekend can be spent actually resting (resting is an important part of anfylk religion).

Full article: The Anfylk Week - Odd Lands Wiki

 

[TrustMeImRudy]

The thing for me is that using the same names is a bit jarring. You have no real world locales or people in my story, and they have different gods so why would they use the same month names that are based on roman gods? Or week days that are based on norse gods?

 

[Svrtnsse]

The thing for me is that using the same names is a bit jarring. You have no real world locales or people in my story, and they have different gods so why would they use the same month names that are based on roman gods? Or week days that are based on norse gods?

I'm doing it out of convenience (laziness is part of it, but it's not the only part).

If I write "It's Monday morning and Enar is hurrying to the office." that puts a certain image in your head.
If I write "It's Truthsday morning and Enar is hurrying to the office." that still puts an image in your head, but it's lacking that feeling of the first morning after the weekend.

That said, I do see where you're coming from. Im working with a contemporary setting where people hurrying to the office are likely clutching umbrellas and portfolios, cramming into subways and spilling cheap coffee out of paper cups. As a world-builder I know where the names originally come from and I haven't bothered making up corresponding gods or any other reason for the names. I haven't felt the need.
This is my setting though and the closeness to the real world isn't necessarily a bad thing here. At least not to my current thinking. I may very well change my mind about it later.

 

[Asterisk]

The calendar of my world is similar to ThinkerX's. There are two seasons, each with warming periods and cooling periods-- The Cold Season and the Season of the Sun. Each month is made of twenty-eight days, but there are thirteen months, the thirteenth with an extra day used to celebrate the new year. This way it adds up to 365 days and (sort of) makes sense. Math, in my opinion, is Mental Abuse To Humans, so I try to stay away from that when writing.

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

Something to keep in mind is that your world won't necessarily have a single calendar to cover everyone. I just wrote a blog post about this a couple weeks ago (here).

Different calendars might be confusing to keep track of, but they'll add flavor to your world and as long as you track them properly can be cool.

 

[TrustMeImRudy]

My world's main continent has seven cultures, and yeah technically each has its own calendar, but the largest launched an invasion a few centuries back that nearly conquered it all. In their time ruling over most of the continent they instated a common tongue and common calendar for eases sake. Its the one I use in the setting, although the individual cultures retain their own languages outside of commerce and government, but the calendar thing is pretty much set.

 

[ThinkerX]

Thinker, thats what I was thinking of originally, very similar to the Egyptian one, but if it has the same orbit as Earth there is a lot of drift per year, so the holidays are all on different dates each year, like ours going along like 'the first monday of november' or so and so,do you just not worry about it?

Nope. Shorter year. 12 * 28 + 4 = 340 days per year. Also 340 day orbit. I've thought about making the days an hour longer or something than ours, but that might be going a bit far.

Way, way back in my initial notes, I went into a bit of detail on the other planets in the solar system, which are important for mythological/astrological reasons.

One moon, good sized but not as large as earths.

A scorched inner planet, large enough to be seen as an actual disk rather than a point of light (if you've got keen eyes), commonly thought of as a shield or guardian of the sun (and often named after a warrior god) ;

a smaller outer planet (named 'Bel'), sort of subhabitable (with a mixed mythological reputation) ;

a gas giant past that with a magnificent set of rings, again just barely visible to those with good vision (and commonly called
'Gods Eye') ;

and another smaller gas giant past it, on the faint side, associated with secrets and mysteries.

The main celestial object the people of my world are concerned with past the sun and moon, though, is the 'demon star', an ...object... on a sort of erratic cometary orbit (normally appears once every two or three generations), bringing magic and chaos with it. At the time most of my tales are set, its not been seen for close to 200 years, and its malign influlence is assumed to be banished.

One tale I've been contemplating for a long time now is a sort of ripoff of Dante's 'Paradise', using the aspects of these worlds in a sort of vision quest: the MC would visit a 'realm' corresponding to the traits assigned each planet. I've actually considered a story or three set on Bel, as well, seeing as part of it is habitable, if just barely so.

I went into similiar detail with the solar system of my other main world, for similiar reasons.

 

[skip.knox]

Is a calendar actually necessary in your narrative? What's wrong with "two days later" and the like.

If you want more specificity, most people in medieval Europe didn't reckon by the calendar much anyway (except for the clergy). Instead, they had feast days. A date was five days before Michaelmas, or ten days past Midsummer, though in truth it was mostly yesterday, tomorrow, or N number of days away from today.

For more abstract counting, they reckoned by the year of their ruler. In the twelfth year of the reign of King Otto, or the like. There wasn't even general agreement on when a new year started!

We moderns are accustomed to dates ... we're enamored of numbers. But that's not how pre-moderns thought, for the most part. You can introduce a certain exotic element simply by *not* assigning dates. Names of days and months are more difficult, but some mileage can be got out of taking names from another language and jiggering the spellling.

I would leave making your calendar astronomically correct as an exercise for your graduate students.

 

[TrustMeImRudy]

Im not a teacher, I have no students! D:
But anyways, you're thinking European. But the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Mayans, and many more all had very accurate calendar systems, often with 365 days similar to our own. Keeping time was very important...astronomically so. And none of my cultures have a primarily European influence, except maybe the forest elves, but that's more of the Irish Celtic, and they are actually the ones who are the least concerned with calendars, instead counting the rings in their associated tree [planted at birth] in their family grove to determine their age, and idk how they keep time on other stuff yet.

Thinker, I like the level of all that. I'm not sure how i will handle planetary systems yet, but they always have mythologically influence so they are important.

 

[Lunaairis]

The calender of my world has 5 seasons. beginning(2 month), Birth(3 months), burning(1 month. Is the hottest season of the year.), rebirth(2 months), Ending (coldest season of the year. 2 months) Each month is divided into 35 days each day taking almost 32 hours to complete.

every 8 years a week of 8 days is added to the calendar and is considered the week of creation. Each day devoted to one of the prime gods/goddess.

 

[ThinkerX]

Is a calendar actually necessary in your narrative? What's wrong with "two days later" and the like.

If you want more specificity, most people in medieval Europe didn't reckon by the calendar much anyway (except for the clergy). Instead, they had feast days. A date was five days before Michaelmas, or ten days past Midsummer, though in truth it was mostly yesterday, tomorrow, or N number of days away from today.

For more abstract counting, they reckoned by the year of their ruler. In the twelfth year of the reign of King Otto, or the like. There wasn't even general agreement on when a new year started!

We moderns are accustomed to dates ... we're enamored of numbers. But that's not how pre-moderns thought, for the most part. You can introduce a certain exotic element simply by *not* assigning dates. Names of days and months are more difficult, but some mileage can be got out of taking names from another language and jiggering the spellling.

I would leave making your calendar astronomically correct as an exercise for your graduate students

My main nation isn't a typical medivial one.

Solaria is a highly organized nation...something like the old line Roman Empire having a head on collision with the Enlightenment. They have telescopes, complex clockworks, and bicycles, among many other tech toys. Messages are sent across a distance of thousands of miles in mere days using a network of semaphore towers. Not just talking imperial edicts, either, but mercentile messages and even personal notes between commoners. Dates and timekeeping are essential to keeping the wheels of empire turning. I'm contemplating having a saintly order dedicated to calender/timekeeping duties.

That said, precise timekeeping is only of occasional importance in the stories: 'if X happens in the eastern empire, then person Y in the western empire will know of it in a couple days, tops'. But, as the author, I need to know this stuff, for internal consistency.

 

[WooHooMan]

It's weird. I've made-up religions, philosophies, political ideologies, languages, fashions, animals and literary genres but it didn't even cross my mind to create a new calendar. I guess I just use the standard 365 days in 12 months. I don't really see a point in making a new calendar. It seems like it'll make the story more confusing.

 

[Queshire]

Hmmmm..... I was just considering this for my latest WIP. I doubt it'll come up a lot in it, but having a different calender system could help reinforce that it's not regular earth. Hm, though I don't think I'll need too much help with that.

I think I'll go with naming the days of the week after numbers. Monday would be Firstday, Tuesday would be Twosday (bum bum tish) Threesday, Foursday, Fivedays, with the weekend being Sixday and Sevenday.

For the months I'm going with twelve months named after different elements most likely. The months would be 30 days each with a five day long celebratory period not part of any month which serves as a Christmas equivalent, and a leap day type thing every four years on the opposite side of the year as the celebratory period. I figure the leap day type thing would coincide with some event. Maybe a one day long demonic invasion?

 

[topazfire]

For my WIP I created a calendar that is very much based on a compass. The compass directions are culturally and religiously significant. So as you may have guessed: there are 360 days, divided into 4 Seasons (instead of months) and each Season (which is treated like a month) is 10 weeks of 9 days each. (So the math works out pretty easy...)

The first day of each Season (or the eve of the next Season) have significance throughout the year, so they are named and celebrated in various ways throughout the realm, and are often the point where major plot events happen.

I hadn't actually thought of naming the days of the week, since it hasn't come up at all in the actual writing. I find that I've been sticking with "a few weeks away" "a week to get there" "in a couple of days" etc.

Like others have said, calendars are more or less important to different groups. People in rural regions are only really concerned with the 4 major holidays, since they mark the changing of the Season. People in the larger cities and the clergy would have more use for weekly or daily record keeping.

 

[Ireth]

One of the fun things about writing a) stories set in the real world and/or b) writing stories about the Fae is that in the case of a, I can just use the real calendar; and in the case of b, the Fae are so ancient they don't even count years. Their most important way of measuring time is by seasons, winter vs. summer (each lasting six months, corresponding to the Celtic calendar). Winter runs from Nov. 1 to April 30; summer runs from May 1 to Oct. 31.

My only story set in a truly alien world is the one about sapient wolves, and that one is a tricky one. For one thing, the world has no moon, so a lunar calendar is impossible; for another, what need does a wolf have for a calendar? Sapient or not, I would think they'd operate mainly on instinct and the natural rhythms of the body (mating seasons, etc.)

 

[skip.knox]

@Ireth: wrt wolves: probably also seasons of the year, which would tend to regulate hunting. You could have a Starving Time, and even rituals to go with that (maybe some contesting for dominance, to lead the pack into winter). Depending on what they hunt, there would be the time when the prey goes away and a time when it reappears. But not much beyond that, for sure.