Was Dec. 21, 2012, the end of days?

Nope. Not so much.

The 13-baktun cycle of the Maya Long Count calendar ended on Dec. 21, 2012, the winter solstice. This cycle is 1,872,000 days or 5,125.366 tropical years long. (A tropical year is when the sun passes from one vernal equinox to another. It is also known as the solar year or year of the seasons.)

The Calendar Round is a 52-Haabʼ synchronized cycle that combines the 260-day Tzolkin with the 365-day Haabʼ. Many groups in the Guatemalan highlands still use the Calendar Round. The Calendar Round united the 260-day ritual calendar and the 365-day annual calendar. The New Fire Ceremony was part of the “Binding of the Years” tradition among the Aztecs. The Binding of the Years occurred every 52 years, or every 18,980 days, as a part of the combination of the two calendars. The Maya Long Count system establishes a unique chronology for each date. For example, Dec. 21, 2012, is special in the Gregorian system.

The Gregorian calendar is the world’s most widely used calendar. It was first proposed by Italian doctor Aloysius Lilius and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII on Feb. 24, 1582. The calendar was named after Pope Gregory XIII and was based on his design.

The Gregorian calendar attempted to address the problems of its predecessor, the Julian calendar. Julius Caesar raised the Julian calendar to abolish the use of the lunar year and eliminate a three-month gap. The Julian calendar added too many leap years and needed to keep up with major astronomical events. This resulted in several lost days until the Middle Ages.

When England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, some 170 years after its introduction by Pope Gregory XIII, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on September second, and not have to get up until September fourteenth.”

According to Gregory’s decree, much of Catholic Europe quickly aligned its calendars. England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Germany and the Netherlands in 1698, and Russia in 1918. Many Orthodox churches still follow the Julian calendar, which now lags 13 days behind the Gregorian.

• A calendariographer is a calendar- or almanac-maker.
• A calendarist is someone who calendars (events, days, etc.) and assigns dates and periods.
• A chronologist focuses on determining dates and the sequence of events.
• Chronology is the science of arranging events in order of occurrence in time.

Every culture, every time, every person has attempted to encapsulate the human experience into a series of events empirically.

Here we are, the 12th month of the Gregorian calendar, rife with elevated emotion and high expectations for what this holiday season will present. It is a time for introspection and renewal for many, if not most. The frenetic energy surrounding these final weeks on the calendar provides little space for quiet contemplation. We seek clarity by filing our life’s expectations into a series of checklists to be completed later: One that begins Jan. 1 of the following calendar year.

Washington Post contributor Shoshana Akabas, in a Nov. 4 article, wrote about the long-seeded disputes regarding adopting a universal calendar system. “In the aftermath of World War I, delegates from dozens of countries met at a League of Nations conference in Geneva, hoping to create a universal calendar that would unite the world. It was my great-great-grandfather’s job to stop them. Our calendar may seem like a fixed system, but calendrical disputes have been raging since, well, the beginning of time.”

The IFC, or the International Fixed Calendar, was comprised of 13 months of 28 days. The benefit of the calendar would be uniformity. Each month would start on a Sunday and end on a Saturday, so one would never have to ask what day of the week the 25th was (a Wednesday), for example. The goal was to perfect a standardized system of timekeeping.

In 1923, the League of Nations created the Special Committee of Enquiry Into the Reform of the Calendar and started accepting proposals. With a universal adoption of the IFC, a one-day “world holiday” between the final Saturday of the year and Sunday, Jan. 1, would bring the total number of days to 365. The fourth General League of Nations Conference on Communication and Transit began on Oct. 12, 1931. Hundreds of calendar proposals had been submitted, but only one was under consideration: the International Fixed Calendar. The attitude among delegates at the conference was that the IFC was all but a done deal.

After heated debates rife with religious and business defense for the calendar to remain Gregorian for most of the globe, the IFC was narrowly scrapped. As a humanity, we almost adopted the IFC calendar just shy of a hundred years ago.

Akabas concluded the article, “Proponents of the IFC continued to push the calendar at additional meetings over the years, but the momentum died out. An attempt to create something that would work for everyone had turned into something that pleased just about no one.”

The next evolution within our calendar system may be the universal adoption of the Chinese calendar. The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar incorporating elements of both a lunar calendar and a solar calendar. It is also known as the Yin Calendar, Xia Calendar, or the Old Chinese Calendar. The Chinese calendar has 12 or 13 months, with 29 or 30 days each month. The 12-month year has 354 or 355 days, while the 13-month year has 383 or 384 days. The Chinese calendar year is divided into 12 lunar cycles, with intercalary months added to keep the year in sync with the solar year of about 365 days. Calendarists are debating the merits of this ancient time-keeping system today as beneficial globally.

Shakespeare uses a melancholy philosopher In his play “As You Like It” to convey, “Since all is folly, nothing serious can stand in its way.”

Do we err on the side of folly as we debate how to measure the ineffable march of time universally?

Humanity has been trying to make sense of this underlying notion that our life cycle should have sequence and order for millennia. Religion presents the arc, and philosophy is the trope. We are still urged to parse our daily events into little boxes, wheels, cycles or zodiacs. As we end this cycle of the Gregorian calendar, challenge yourself to try something different. Rather than waiting for the next line of boxes on a square page on your kitchen wall to begin a better habit, a lifestyle change or to reach out to someone estranged, start now. Today is what we have — the gift of the present. Use this gift wisely.

Born and raised under the shadow of Mount Timpanogos, Camille Heckmann is relieved to be back in Utah County. A grad school dropout, former Army wife, mother to four kids and 21 moves, all followed by divorce and tragedy during her adult life, have provided enough texture to observe and write about the human condition. You can follow her exploits and writing career on Instagram at @millie_writer.

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