Over the years, whether you are aware of it or not, we have all lived and suffered through the problems with our Gregorian Calendar. While it suffices, it has major issues that don’t need to exist. What are some of those issues, you ask?

• How many days does a month have? We spend time teaching this in our schools, using our knuckles to figure it out, and yet it slows us all down. 28, 29, 30, 31? It does not have to be that hard.
• Holidays. No one likes a holiday that is not attached to a weekend. It leads to less productivity, and less enjoyment. Having Independence Day be on a Thursday means that Friday is not going to be a productive day in the workplace across our fine nation. That can be fixed.
• Figuring out what date falls on what day of the week. It changes everyyear. Again, it does not have to be that way. This might put the calendar people out of business, but people can still buy their cat calendars if they want to.
• Beauty and symmetry. A year around the sun is 365.24 days around the sun. So it needs to be 365 days most of the time, 366 every four years or so, and skip a leap year every hundred years to go from 365.25 to 365.24. And I think we need to keep weeks, as they provide rhythm to our lives. But the months provide no beauty or symmetry. The calendar keeps us guessing. That too can be fixed.

So what do we do? Clearly a new calendar is needed to address those issues. My Jillean calendar addresses all of the issues above. Let’s review its tenets:

• We like our traditional months, whose names are based on Roman gods, leaders, numbers or festivals. Let’s not disturb everything! There’s no need to change the names of the twelve that exist.
• Let’s keep the week as it exists too. Sunday and Monday (Sun and Moon, a tradition started by the Babylonians), Tuesday is for an Anglo-Saxon god of war, and Wednesday through Saturday are all named for Roman gods. Makes sense to keep all of that, right?
• But . . . 12 months just does not work. Let’s make it a super fun 13, and make every month have exactly 28 days, or exactly 4 weeks.
• And let’s add a new month at the end, Jilliember, and make it 4 weeks as well. Here’s the math – 13 months times 28 days equals 364 days.
• And where do we get the extra day? Make the day after New Year’s Eve a non-day. It’s not a day of the week. I’m calling it Day Zero, as a tribute to Mayan and Hindu cultures, and as a beautiful pausing point after ending the old year and before beginning the new year.
• And let’s make all national holidays be a Friday or a Monday.

What does it look like? Take a look for yourself!