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Why do we need a new calendar each year?

At some point I have asked myself the question: Why does man need a new calendar each year? With an invariable calendar one could give up the yearly acquisition.

How many different calendars are there actually? Since there are only seven weekdays, shouldn’t seven different calendars be enough? Why doesn’t this work though?

There are actually twenty-eight different calendars when the leap year is taken into consideration. So I asked more and more questions.

One question provoked the next until I reached the question:
Why does a week actually have seven days and why does Easter move back and forth so extremely? The following two questions must be answered first of all:

1) Why is the calendar so complicated?

2) With all these irregularities, why hasn’t anyone changed it?Before I was to find the answers, I first had to clarify the reasons and clearly work out the connections.

I have divided the answers as follows:

• Astronomical factors concerning the structure of a calendar
• Origins of our calendar
• The reform of the calendar by Pope Gregory XIII
• Failed calendar reforms
• Faults in the current calendar
• Background behind the Easter rule
• Attempts to reform the calendar in the 20th century
• Do we need a calendar reform?

And so to the first question: Why is the calendar so complicated? What are the underlying reasons for calendar maker’s problems?

Three irrefutable timers relentlessly dictate the cycle. There is no point in complaining about them. One must simply accept them as they are and come to some sort of an arrangement with them.

My preoccupation with the calendar led me to two quite surprising discoveries. It was evident that even the specialists had no answer to the question concerning the origins of the Easter rule and no one really knew anything about a calendar reform.

So, in passing, I also discovered the fact which has since become quite well known - that the turn of the millennium was actually being celebrated a year too early.

Let me now approach the factors concerning the structure of a calendar.

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