CALENDAR CHANGE Part 2 Ritchie Way

Two organisations, the International Fixed Calendar League and The World Calendar Association, aggressively promoted their version of calendar reform in the first half of the 20th Century. The International Fixed Calendar League favoured a thirteen equal-month, blank-day calendar, while The World Calendar Association promoted the twelve month equal-quarter blank-day plan.
The World Calendar
The World Calendar Association (TWCA) was founded by Elizabeth Achelis of Brooklyn, New York, in 1930. She presented her reformed calendar to the League of Nations where it gained considerable support. The following year she started the Journal of Calendar Reform, which was published for twenty-five years.
The Achelis World Calendar is a perennial calendar with equal quarters of ninety-one days, each of which begins with a Sunday and ends with a Saturday. The three months of each quarter have thirty-one, thirty and thirty days respectively. The first month of each quarter always begins with Sunday 1st; the second month of each quarter always begins with Wednesday 1st, and the last month of each quarter always begins with Friday 1st.
The World Calendar also has two off-calendar days known as Worldsday, which is listed as 31st December, and Leapyear Day, which is listed as 31st June. Both days are blank days, that is, they fall between a Saturday and a Sunday on the World Calendar.
To view a graphical presentation of the World Calendar go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World Calendar on the web.
After the Second World War, Achelis presented her World Calendar to the United Nations, but because of pressure from Sabbath-observing people in the United States, the US delayed universal adoption in 1955 by withholding support ‘unless such a reform were favoured by a substantial majority of the citizens of the United States acting through their representatives in the Congress of the United States.’ When Achelis failed to get the support of ‘a substantial majority of the citizens of the United States’ the work of calendar reform received a deadly wound. However, The World Calendar Association, International, which sponsors the Achelis World calendar, has now chosen 2012 as the new date to get its calendar adopted and its wound healed.

The Leapweek Calendars
Is there an acceptable alternative calendar to the thirteen equal-month blank-day calendar and the Achelis twelve month equal-quarter blank-day calendar?
One year before the Geneva Conference, James A. Colligan produced his Pax Calendar which avoided blank days by adding a seven-day leap week to the perpetual 364 day year for seventy-one of every four hundred years. The attractiveness of Colligan’s revision was that it preserved the perpetuity of the seven day week, and therefore would not disrupt the worship of those who observed the seventh-day Sabbath.
Colligan calculated that years ending in 00 would have Pax, unless the year was divisible by 400. Colligan’s reformed calendar had a year of thirteen months, each month having twenty-eight days.
While Colligan’s calendar has the major advantage of preserving the perpetuity of the seven day week, and while every month is exactly the same, thirteen months are not easily divided into halves and quarters for statistical purposes. Also, having thirteen months, rather than twelve in the year, could mean greater costs in monthly charges for such things as electricity, payment of wages and rents, etc.
A similar calendar revision was proposed by Professor Cecil L. Woods of California, who at one time spent six years in China as a Seventh-day Adventist missionary. Woods proposed a Jubilee Calendar in which seventy-one intercalary weeks are inserted in the calendar within a period of 400 years, as follows:
A ‘Jubilee Week’ would be inserted between the last day of December and the first day of January at the beginning of years that are divisible by five, except those ending in 25 or 75 or divisible by 400. The first day of the Jubilee week would be called 1 Jubilee, the second, 2 Jubilee, and so on. This Jubilee week was not to be considered as a part of any year, but would exist outside the year.
The supporters of the Achelis World Calendar hotly oppose Leapyear calendars on the basis that they disregard the annual seasons. But people who live in countries where, on a regular basis, the natural seasons often vary by much more than a week, would not consider this argument to have much weight. And when some Australian farmers wait years for seasonal rains, it seems a mere quibble to complain that the calendar may not match the seasons by as much as five or six days.
Furthermore, the businesses of most people in the world are not dependant upon seasonal changes to any great degree these days. Most people live and work indoors and seasonal fruits and vegetables are shipped from one hemisphere to the other. Besides, those whose livelihoods do depend upon the seasons would be able to make a simple adjustment. The dislocation created by a leapyear is a small and insignificant sacrifice compared to the dislocation of the Sabbath for millions of worshippers worldwide.

The Anti-religious Opposition
The final issue of the Journal of Calendar Reform, criticising Woods’ proposal for a Jubilee Week, said, ‘We have here a striking example how far Orthodox groups will go in order to maintain their own particular traditional idea. Self-interest blinds them to the far greater and wider concept of the calendar. They do not understand its universality. They do not realise that the civil calendar belongs alike to Catholic and Protestant Christian, to Jew and Seventh-Day Adventist, to Moslem and Hindu. The World Calendar is actually a universal system of Time in arrangement, purpose, scope and usage.’i
It is difficult to understand the Journal’s argument where it claims Orthodox groups do not understand the universality of the calendar, because no calendar that disenfranchises millions of Sabbath observers around the world could justifiably claim to be ‘universal’ in its benefits to mankind.
As stated earlier, The World Calendar Association International, has resumed efforts towards having The World Calendar with its blank days, adopted by 2012. Will future calendar reform be responsible for the consummative fulfilment of Daniel 7:25, where it says of the Antichrist: ‘He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law …’ (NASB)? We don’t know. We do know, however, that future calendar reform is inevitable, and should a reformed calendar be introduced with blank days, so that Sabbath observers were faced with a Sabbath that came in the middle of the working week, it would create a great shaking time in the Church, and a serious time of trouble for the faithful.
On such a day would people be so committed to maintaining the sign of their New Covenant relationship with the Lord that they would close their businesses, refuse to go to work and keep their children out of school? What would you do?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, A. W. The Proposed New Calendar: Will it Bring Peace or Confusion? Warburton, Australia: Signs Publishing Company, n.d.
Haynes, Carlyle B. World Calendar verses World Religion. Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Publishing Association, 1948.
Haynes, Carlyle B. Calendar Change Threatens Religion. Washington 12, D.C.: Religious Liberty Association, n.d.
Journal of Calendar Reform, December 1955 – January 1956.
Nichol, Francis D. The Story of a Lost Day. Mountain View, California: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1930.
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World Calendar

Endnote:
Journal of Calendar Reform, (December 1955 – January 1956), p. 189.

A similar calendar revision was proposed by Professor Cecil L. Woods of California, who at one time spent six years in China as a Seventh-day Adventist missionary. Woods proposed a Jubilee Calendar in which seventy-one intercalary weeks are inserted in the calendar within a period of 400 years …