Our calendar dates back to Julius Caesar, and the week of 7 days is even older. I am sure in this day and age we could create a friendlier calendar and make it more suitable to our life style. Actually we could use it to change our life style.

I remember a while ago when people were dreaming about the year 2000, the dream was that by then we would be working only 4 days a week. Of course a drop to 4 work days means a substantial pay cut. With a 7-day week, it would mean a 20% pay cut. With a 6-day week, it means only about a 6% pay cut. I think most people could live with a 6% pay cut if it meant more time off. This would probably stimulate the economy, and it would most likely create more jobs. The extra time off would have to be covered by new people. This might be a nice way to restart the economy.

Before we consider a 6 days per week calendar, let's look at the origin of our present calendar.

Originally the Romans numbered years ab urbe condita, that is, "from the founding of the city" (of Rome). Following his conquest of Egypt in 48 B.C. (707 a.u.c.) Julius Caesar consulted the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes about calendar reform. The calendar which Julius Caesar adopted in the year 46 B.C. (709 a.u.c.) consisted of a solar year of twelve months and of 365 days with an extra day every fourth year.

The average length of a year in the Julian Calendar is 365.25 days. But this is not quite the length of a real solar year. The difference between the length of the Julian calendar year and the length of the real solar year is around 11 minutes.

Since there is 1,440 minutes in a day, after 131 years on a given date you have moved forward in space the equivalent of 1 day (1,440 / 11 = 130.90). By the time Pope Gregory XIII was elected in 1572, an event like the winter solstice was happening 10 days earlier (on the calendar) than at the time of Julius Caesar.

This was rectified when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day after Thursday, 4 October 1582 would not be Friday, 5 October, but Friday, 15 October 1582. The rule for leap years was changed, to prevent this from happening again. In the Gregorian Calendar a year is a leap year if either (i) it is divisible by 4 but not by 100 or (ii) it is divisible by 400. This in effect eliminates 3 leap years every 400 years. I've mentioned above that the previous calendar was gaining 1 day every 131 years. To perfectly fix the problem 3 days have to be eliminated every 393 years (not 400). Therefore the Gregorian calendar still needs some adjustment to keep perfect sync with the real solar year. Without that adjustment, over a very long time period the northern hemisphere will end up celebrating Christmas in the summer. Actually one of the reasons for the Gregorian reform was to reschedule Easter when according to the church it should occur.

But now let's talk about some more drastic reform. Let's look at a week of 6 days. With a calendar of 6 days per week we could also have a perpetual fixed calendar. It would have 60 weeks of 6 days, and one week with 5 days. On leap years it would have 61 weeks of 6 days. There would be 12 months, 11 of them with 30 days, and the last month (December) with 35 days, in leap years 36 days.

Let's assume we've dropped Saturday. We could also rule that January first is always on a Sunday; therefore December 35 would always be on a Thursday. In order for January first to be a Sunday we would have to skip a day at the end of each year (except in leap years). Therefore the day after Thursday December 35, would usually be Sunday, January First (instead of Friday, January First) except in leap years when there is a Friday, December 36 (no need to skip a day in leap years). This way the dates and the days would always be the same. Every month would start on a Sunday. Your birthday would always be on the same day. In some ways this would make it more realistic. If you were born on a Tuesday, your birthday would always be on a Tuesday. We could move Christmas to Sunday December 31st, and the full week of December 31 to January 1st would be a holiday.