As Time Goes By

A kiss may still be a kiss as time goes by, but exactly how time goes by has always been up for debate: At sunset on September 13th, our Jewish brothers and sisters will welcome the new year 3776. That is based on a lunar calendar and used to schedule holidays and other religious observances. You may compare it to our liturgical calendar which starts on the first Sunday of Advent. If you are following politics you may be aware that the fiscal year ends on September 30th.

Every entity has its own calendar. The dates that we commonly use nowadays are from the Gregorian calendar. It is named for Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in 1582. It replaced the Julian calendar which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE. Initially Protestants like us did not want to make the switch because it was imposed by the Pope. Who gets to set the world schedule? Who is in charge here?

And after thousands of years of calendar-making the whole system is still far from perfect. You may think you know how many days there are in a year but reality is that there are 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds. We need a leap year every four years except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. Confused yet?

Bottom lime: Time is not real, or at least it’s not objective: It’s a way in which we tell out stories. Every family has its own time line:
Remember when we moved from that town to this city?
Oh, everything changed after our baby was born!
Those were interesting times when I worked at that place.

Truth is: your time is yours alone and calendars are just attempts to synchronize us together into larger contexts like business schedules or holidays. Time is fundamentally relative, as Albert Einstein put it. Tell your story your way and be aware that everybody else does that, too.

To our Jewish friends: Shanah Tovah!