Calendar

Calendar

Best online calendar for free

The Justfreetools.com 2021 calendar is automatically generated and can always be visited online. Also month calendars in 2021 including week numbers can be viewed at any time by clicking on one of the above months. Additionally you can view also leap years, daylight saving, current moon phase in 2021, moon calendar 2021, world clocks and more by selecting an item in the menu above.

History of our Calendar

Before today’s Gregorian calendar was adopted, the older Julian calendar was used. It was admirably close to the actual length of the year, as it turns out, but the Julian calendar was not so perfect that it didn’t slowly shift off track over the following centuries. But, hundreds of years later, monks were the only ones with any free time for scholarly pursuits – and they were discouraged from thinking about the matter of "secular time" for any reason beyond figuring out when to observe Easter. In the Middle Ages, the study of the measure of time was first viewed as prying too deeply into God’s own affairs – and later thought of as a lowly, mechanical study, unworthy of serious contemplation.

As a result, it wasn’t until 1582, by which time Caesar’s calendar had drifted a full 10 days off course, that Pope Gregory XIII (1502 - 1585) finally reformed the Julian calendar. Ironically, by the time the Catholic church buckled under the weight of the scientific reasoning that pointed out the error, it had lost much of its power to implement the fix. Protestant tract writers responded to Gregory’s calendar by calling him the "Roman Antichrist" and claiming that its real purpose was to keep true Christians from worshiping on the correct days. The "new" calendar, as we know it today, was not adopted uniformly across Europe until well into the 18th century.

Calendars around the world

Those of you who are convinced that today is September 3, 2019, follow the Gregorian calendar. It was named after Pope Gregory XIII, who instituted it close to 437 years ago in 1582. It's currently recognized by most sovereign countries. "Most" doesn't mean "all", though.

As with daylight saving time and, to a certain extent, time zones, it's up to individual states to decide which calendar they are going to go by. There are plenty to choose from, and predictably, things are not all the same everywhere.

For example, the Ethiopian calendar is used as the principal calendar in Ethiopia and parts of Eritrea. It has twelve months each consisting of 30 days as well as 5 or 6 days that comprise the thirteenth month. The first day of the Ethiopian year falls on what we consider September 11 (or September 12 on a year preceding a Gregorian leap year).

In Iran and Afghanistan, the official calendar is the solar Hijri calendar. Its year begins with the March equinox (the day when the plane of the Earth's equator passes through the center of the Sun), and it too has twelve months. The first six months consist of 31 days, the following five consists of 30 days, and the final one is comprised of 29 days.

It must be said that these two examples are more of an exception. In many countries, traditional calendars are used for religious celebrations, but for civil purposes, the systems for counting days and months are usually similar to the Gregorian calendar. When it comes to years, things can be a bit different, though.

In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), for example, the months and days are counted in the same way as in the Western World. Ask a North Korean to tell you what year it is, however, and they'll say 108. That's because the Juche calendar, the official calendar in the DPRK, begins in the Gregorian 1912 – the year of Kim Il-sung's birth.

There are other variations, but the fact of the matter is that the system Pope Gregory XIII introduced all those years ago has more or less made its way into the everyday life of almost everyone on this planet. Given how diverse the civilized world is, this is quite remarkable. There is a good reason for it, though.