WHAT TIME IS IT?

What time is it? Here we are almost 10 years into the new millennium and you stop one day and think: "Hey, wait a minute! Isn't every year the beginning of a new millennium?" Well, sure it is, just not one that's neatly marked off on our calendar. You know the one, it starts with the year 1 A.D. but wasn't invented and put into use until 1582, when more than three quarters of the years we count on our calendars now were over, but were never called by their proper nomenclature while they were occurring. Yeah, that's the one, The Gregorian Calendar invented by Pope Gregory the 13th, who isn't famous for a damned thing other that arbitrarily altering what we call the years in which we are living.

Calendar Gregory actually had other solid accomplishments as pope, reforming the church with the Council of Trent (if you call making the papacy even more powerful that it already was and updating a list of banned books "reform"), promoting scientific study and founding a bunch of universities. Unlike his namesake Pope Gregory the 1st, though, he never got to be called Gregory The Great by anyone, but we are still calling our years to his tune, so he gets the last word. Or number, to be more precise, and precision is the main goal of a proper calendar.

His calendar replaced the Julian Calendar, invented by one Julius Caesar of Rome, who was famous for a whole bunch of other stuff, very little of it admirable in any way, unless you're a huge fan of conquest, betrayal and killing, in which case he was Julius The Great. Caesar put his calendar into use in 45 B.C., the year after this first emperor of the Roman Empire (the nation formerly known as the Roman Republic) conquered Egypt. He didn't call his years B.C. and count backwards up to the birth of Jesus Christ like Gregory did, not being aware that a Savior would be born 44 years after his own murder and subsequent deification, but he did invent the concept of the leap year with the extra day in February every four years. After consulting with astronomers in Alexandria, he called his first year 709 (46 B.C.), which would now be 2718 if it wasn't for Gregory the Not-So-Great.

His calendar replaced an awkward Roman calendar previously in use that had years of 355 days with a 27-day month inserted at confusingly irregular intervals to make up the discrepancy between the Roman years and the actual 365 and a quarter days it takes the earth to spin around the sun. Caesars system lasted in popular use for over 1600 years until Calendar Gregory got his brainstorm. Even though the Christian world took to Gregory's calendar (Like they had any choice in the matter. Popes, like emperors, were a powerful and ruthless breed who were disobeyed at one's mortal peril.), the highly accurate Julian calendar remained in use in Russia until 1918 and is still used today by Berbers in Morocco and by some national Orthodox Christian Churches, mostly in Europe and Eurasia, not out of any reverence for Julius Caesar, but maybe figuring if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Of course, to Jews the year is 5770, the exact amount of years ago they think the earth was created, or a least the most Orthodox of them do. Cute, no? Christian Fundamentalists and Creationists agree with this assessment of this planet's age even though the joint has been around for four and half billion years. That's probably about the only area where fundamentalist Christians agree with fundamentalist Jews, who they generally don't approve of, in spite of Jesus Christ's having been born, lived his whole life and died a Jew and was called "Rabbi" by his disciples. So they go with the Gregorian calendar, in spite of despising Catholics almost as much as they do Jews. Go figure those wacky born-agains, eh?

The Chinese calendar year is 4605, 4606 or 4745, depending on the
(?) epoch used, or the approximate number of years ago one of their emperors, some guy named Huangdi, decided that he would be the one to decide what time it is. A real contradiction of a man, Huangdi introduced both martial arts and sophisticated medical practices to China, as well as being an important religious figure in Taoism and Confucianism. Making him, what, Tri-Polar? The Chinese still number their Years of the Rat, the Snake, the Tiger and the Dragon and so forth by Huangdi's calendar numbers, and blow up lots of fireworks on Chinese New Year even though it's not the Fourth of July. No one's got the heart to tell them how wrong this is, and being that it was the Chinese who invented fireworks and gunpowder in the first place but didn't put two and two together and invent actual guns, we let it go.

Then there's the Islamic calendar, with the current year being 1430 AH, dating from the year of the Prophet Mohammed's emigration from Mecca to Medina, the Hejira, hence the AH for After Hejira. The Islamic calendar is mostly used to figure out the exact date for when Muslim holy days fall in the universally used Gregorian calendar. This calendar was first adopted in by the second Caliph, Umar, in 17AH, or the Gregorian year of 622 A.D., which we call C.E. these days, standing for Common Era, as it is now politically correct to call our Gregorian years. The term B.C., for Before Christ, has been replaced by B.C.E., standing for Before Common Era. The Islamic calendar goes with the BH for Before Hejira years. For example, Mohammed was born in 53 BH, his age when he took his show on the road to Medina.

So, what time is it again? Oh, wait, let's adjust our clocks one hour every half a year to save sunshine during Daylight Savings Time, however that's supposed to work other than annoying the crap out of us when it is pitch dark at 5 PM. Supposedly this is done to conserve energy, or create better daylight business for retailers, or to help farmers, or reduce traffic fatalities, no one's really sure. There's a lot of reasons put forward, but just seems like more of the same for humans tinkering with time and the way it is measured. We love to command the tides and the time, like Captain Kirk announcing Star Date 5 thousand and something or other with authority and confidence. One system seems as good as any other when you live your day-to-day life, but it's fun to tinker around with stuff like Kings and Gods, inventing all sorts of conflicting time measurements. Confusing? You bet, but we're humans and that's what we do.

Sort of makes us feel we're in control of something basic, monumental and eternal, which of course we are not. It is fun to pretend, though, and who knows, if one of us gets to be emperor or pope, maybe there will be a new calendar in use one of these days. Even though Gregory's calendar is in universal use today, it's still a relative baby among calendar systems on this earth at only 427 years old. In another 10 or 20 years we may be using Fred's Calendar, more respectfully called the Freddian Calendar, and just maybe our notion of hours, minutes and seconds will be altered too, with something other than a base 12 or a base 60 numbers system, with no double 8 o'clocks every day. What the hell, time doesn't seem to care, rolling along right on it's own schedule no matter how we choose to measure it. What was the question again? Oh yeah, what time is it? Who the hell knows at this point?