Calendar Confusion

Over the past couple weeks, in the markets and at busy intersections, vendors have been walking up and down hawking new calendars. Fair enough. It’s time to replace the old ones hanging in kitchens and tea shops all over the country. But wait…

These calendars are laid out sideways. The Sundays boxes travel across the top of the sheet, not down the left edge like I’m used to. The next row contains all the Monday dates, and so on until the bottom row—only Saturdays. To make it look correct to my eye, you would have to rotate it to the right 90 degrees, and then flip it horizontally.

I bought one. Slowly I’m adjusting. When in Rome, and all that. But now that I have a chance to study it every day, new weirdness is emerging. For instance, in Burmese, the year is written as 1375, not 2014.

At first I thought, I get it—they’re using a starting point other than the Common Era’s, just like next door in Thailand, where this year is 2557. Thais say it was that many years ago that Buddha reached enlightenment, and thereby got released from the cycles of birth and death.

But then I Googled a little bit and my brain started to spin. I was coming across concepts like the Indian Chulasakarat System from the 7th Century, and lunisolar years, and Metonic cycles. I mean, what the hell is an intercalary month, anyway? And why would you want to add one now and then to make the year 384 days long?

I gave up pretty quickly trying to understand all this stuff. Now I just tilt my head whenever I look at the Burmese calendar, and I figure out what day it is quickly and easily. Somebody else can worry about when the Sun is scheduled to enter Aries. If you feel like messing around with all the stuff, be my guest. Here’s a link.