Reflections: John T. Harding

Twelve is good, but thirteen is ungood

A full moon will appear 13 times during the coming year. This raises the question of why the calendar lists only 12 months if each month is meant to honor the lunar time period.

Here are some things to consider:

Society considers 12 to be good, but 13 is not. Therefore, society chose a 12-month year, even though that does not fit easily into a 365 day year. Rather, based on a 30-day month, that totals a 12-month year of 360 days. That’s five days short of a full solar year of 365 days.

To resolve that, children are taught to chant this:

“30 days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31, save February, which has 28 and no more, except when Leap Year comes around, when it has 29.”

So that’s four months of 30 days, seven months of 31 days, and one of 28, but even that’s not enough.

Consider this: The lunar cycle has 28 days, and if you divide that into the solar cycle of 365, one gets 13 months, with just one day short of a full solar year. That’s a closer match than a five-day shortage in the traditional calendar.

But 13 is ungood, so society opted for the more complicated method for the calendar year, to avoid having to deal with the perceived ungood number.

The downside of this method is the risk of having an occasional Friday the 13th, an especially ungood day. This happens if each week begins on a Sunday, despite the popular habit of referring to Monday as the beginning of the week.

This can be resolved by starting each calendar week on Monday, and using the more accurate yearly calendar described above, there will never be a Friday the 13th.

Consider all this as you watch the full moon.

John T. Harding lives in Doylestown.

Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.