Adhering to either one would cause the year to “drift” relative to the seasons. The issue with strictly lunar calendars is that there are approximately 12.4 lunar months to each solar year, so a twelve-month lunar calendar is slightly too short, while a thirteen-month lunar calendar is slightly too long. Like the Chinese calendar, the Jewish calendar is lunar, with each month commencing with the new moon. East Africa time, Ethiopians start over again, and it becomes one o’clock in nighttime hours. in East African time corresponds to one o’clock in daylight hours in local time, and at seven p.m. So local time is based on a twelve-hour clock, with one cycle from dawn to dusk and the other cycle from dusk to dawn. Since Ethiopia is close to the Equator, daylight hours remain quite consistent throughout the year. This is true because most Ethiopians don’t keep time using the ante-meridian (am) and post-meridian (pm) timing systems. In addition to date conversion, hour conversion is necessary as well. If it doesn’t already seem like keeping appointments might be difficult for tourists in Ethiopia, things are about to get even more confusing. That puts right now in early 2012 in Ethiopian time. Based on alternate calculations of the date of the announcement of Jesus Christ’s birth, the Ethiopian calendar is seven years behind, with its new year corresponding to September 11th of the Gregorian calendar – or September 12th if it’s a leap year. If you live in Ethiopia, you’re behind time…literally. Variants of the Chinese colander are also used in Korea, Vietnam and the Ryukyu Islands. In order of occurrence, the animals are rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, fowl, dog and pig. Each month can be referred to by an animal name or a number, which also corresponds to particular hours of the day, as well as years in the zodiac cycle. Leap months, rather than days, are added as needed.

The Chinese calendar is essentially a lunar calendar, with twelve months of twenty-nine or thirty days that each begins on the first day of a new moon. Whew! The Chinese CalendarĪlthough modern-day China relies on the Gregorian calendar, the traditional Chinese calendar still governs the dates of important holidays such as the Chinese Lantern Festival, and it is also used as a tool for selecting auspicious dates for weddings, funerals, moving, and starting businesses. It’s known as the Saka calendar, and with twelve months consisting of twenty-nine to thirty days each, it’s relatively similar to the Gregorian calendar. Many holidays in Bali are set according to the Pawukon calendar, but some follow their lunar calendar instead. And unlike the Gregorian calendar in which Tuesday always follows Monday, the days of the Pawukon calendar do not always occur in the same order. But that’s not all – since two-hundred and ten is not divisible by four, eight, or nine, days tend to repeat in those weeks. As such, the eleventh day of the year would be the first day of another ten-day week, the second day of a nine-day week, the third day of an eight-day week, etc. There are ten different concurrent weeks of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten days, meaning that the first day of the year is the first day of all ten weeks. Beyond this, it is highly complex and can be quite difficult for outsiders to understand. One of two calendars used on the Indonesian island of Bali, the Pawukon calendar year is two hundred and ten days long and consists of six thirty-five-day months, a number which reflects the ancient rice-growing cycles of the island. Today, we’ll look at six other calendars in use today, according to which we are living anywhere from the 1300s to the 2000s, and even as recently as back in 2012. As we approach this milestone, it’s interesting to note that although the Gregorian calendar is the most common time-keeping system in the world, it certainly isn’t the only one. Those of us who use the Gregorian calendar are about to head into a new decade – the 2020s. Today, it is the most popular calendar system in the world. In 1699, it was adopted by the Protestant German states in 1752, by England and its colonies, including the United States in 1753, by Sweden in 1873, by Japan and then in the early nineteen-hundreds, it was adopted by China, the Soviet Union, and Greece. After its introduction, it slowly spread across Italy, then to Portugal, Spain, and the German Catholic states. The Gregorian calendar dates back to 1592 when Pope Gregory XIII instituted it as a revision of the Julien calendar.

Length of months in islamic calendar