Bringing SCIENCE to our calendar with New Year's Day in March

It is said that time is just our mind's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once.

If so, the calendar is just a man-made way to measure the passage of time, which is artificial.

It's man-made and I say we should change it. We can throw the whole thing out.

If we want to maintain the pretense of following the Gregorian calendar (established in 1582, Tom Brady's rookie year in the NFL), we can agree on something: There's room for improvement.

That is more obvious today than any day of the year. It's the day after Christmas, nearing the end of the holiday season, but we have another holiday coming up this week.

We still have New Year's Day (and New Year's Eve).

It's another holiday after a seemingly endless series of holidays. It's there because someone long ago (Tom Brady? Maybe) decided that the new year on the man-made calendar would start seven days after Christmas.

The decisionmaker didn't account for holiday fatigue, nor for the fact that they added another day off when the weather is bad.

Can't we agree that the cavalcade of holidays (particularly the Thanksgiving-Hanukkah-Christmas-Kwanzaa-New Year's Day series) is at least one holiday too many?

My proposal is simple. It doesn't fix every calendar problem (such as the weird variation in how long "a month" is), but it fixes the biggest problem (having Christmas and New Year's Day seven days apart).

Doesn't it make more sense to start the year when spring starts (at least in the Northern Hemisphere. We could start it when fall starts in the Southern Hemisphere)?

Here is the Stanhope Change in Every Nation's Calendar Events (SCIENCE) plan: New Year's Day becomes the first day of spring (March 19, 20 or 21, depending on the year).

You don't like this? Are you disputing SCIENCE?

Imagine a world where we follow SCIENCE: New Year's Day comes at the start of spring (for 85% of the world's population), when it should. Things are growing. It's getting warmer. It's a time of renewal.

We don't need a needless middle-of-winter holiday (I realize Dec. 31 is only the 11th day of winter, but that's another column: How our seasons are wrong). Instead, we get a day off when it's starting to get warmer and nicer–or at worst, warmer, nicer days are coming.

The only potential downside is that the SCIENCE New Year's Day can fall near Easter and Passover, but according to my calculations, Easter falls within a week of March 19-21 only twice in the next 20 years. So not really a problem.

This change makes things better for us, since it spreads out holidays. It presumably makes things better for businesses, which have a shorter time to account for being understaffed in December. It's better for everyone.

The change requires only one group to modify how it works: Calendar makers would presumably make 13-month calendars that would include March twice (since the year begins March 19-21).

Would they be sad? No, it changes nothing.

This week, as you get ready to commemorate the New Year, think about how this would be in March.

It would be the same celebration, just a bigger deal. And it would be welcomed as a more special holiday.

You don't agree? Fine. You're arguing with SCIENCE.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.