Fans of the French Republican Calendar will note that today is the leap-day, the French Republican equivalent of 29th February, to bring the annual four-year cycle to a close. So it’s quite fittingly known as the Jour de la révolution.
Year 221 starts tomorrow.
Do note, by the way, that today is the French Republican Calendrical equivalent of 29 February — it’s the leap-day that comes round in order to complete the quadrennial cycle, hence its magnificently appropriate name.
I’ve long thought that the EU got things the wrong way around when it mandated use of the (French Revolutionary) metric system and stuck to the old Gregorian Calendar. My offer to Mr Brown’s Government is that if they legislate to implement the French Republican Calendar in this country, I shall drop my opposition to the creation of British Values Day — especially if it gets held on the Jour de la révolution, which would mean not only that it’ll only come around every four years, but also that it’ll tacitly, or not-so-tacitly, identify British Values with French Republican Values, which would be a significant improvement on what’s otherwise likely to be on offer.
Year CCXVII kicks off tomorrow…
As everyone should know by now, today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so please feel free to Talk Like A Pirate in the comments box here, or, indeed, elsewhere. Suggestions over here. Ah, Jim lad.
It’s also the Jour de la raison, according to the version of the French Republican Calendar installed at this site, one of the holidays that brings the old year to a close — and it is appropriate, I think, that a day celebrating human reason should fall on International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
If there are any Calendar Bores out there, can he or she (but, more likely, he) tell me how often the French Republican New Year and the Jewish New Year coincide? It seems that from sunset this evening until midnight Paris time we have overlapping New Year festivities, which I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before.
(Will French Republican Jews celebrate with especial vigour this evening, or do they worry that that would compromise their French Republican identity? I like to think that they will.)
It is, of course, Décade I, Primidi de Vendémiaire de l’Année CCXV de la Révolution today, in the ongoing calendrical celebration of the people’s triumph over monarchical tyranny that is the French Republican Calendar.
Please note (above) that today is “Jour de la raison”, as we’re into the annual cycle of holidays that closes out the French Republican Calendrical year, so can we stop talking like pirates and start being rational.
(Don’t worry: it’s just for one day.)
See above.
Friends of the Republican Calendar: note that we’re cycling through the end-of-year holidays prior to Year CCXIV beginning on (Gregorian) 22 September.
Y213 begins…
Le jour de gloire est arrivé! Yes, it’s the leap-year day in the arithmetical version of the French Revolutionary Calendar that this blogsite enjoys thanks to the expert engineering of Steve over at Very True Things.
Phersu has noted the occasion, too in a footnote to a post from earlier today:
(Via Portique virtuel, qui rappelle qu’aujourd’hui est dans une version simplifiée et homogénéisée au calendrier grégorien du calendrier de Fabre d’Eglantine le “Jour de la révolution” de l’An CCXII – le Jour de la Révolution est un jour qui n’existe que les années bissextiles, toutes les “Franciades” de quatre ans, le dernier “jour complémentaire” de l’année, demain nous serons le 1er Vendémiaire An 213 après la proclamation de la Ière République).
I couldn’t put it better myself.I’ve always maintained that the EU made the wrong choice when it embraced the French Revolutionary Metric System (“The Revolution has given the People the Metre!”) but rejected the French Revolutionary Calendar. Clearly the way forward is to combine old English weights and measures with the harmonious enjoyment of of the passage of time that the Republican Calendar makes possible.
But I suspect I’m still in a minority on this one.
As you’ll already have noticed, the annual cycle of French Republican holidays has begun, those days which don’t belong to the regular months of the Republican Year, but come between the end of Fructidor and the start of Vendémiaire, which kicks off the new year. Today, for example, is the Jour de la Vertu.
But it’s more exciting than usual this year. Steve, who once upon a time wrote the code for the excellent French Republican calendar which adorns this blog (and who now has his own blog) has emailed to remind me that this is a French Republican Leap Year, with the result that next Tuesday is the quadrennial (and, in the circumstances, entirely aptly named) Jour de la Révolution!
Be sure to indulge in suitable celebrations.
I’m delighted to see that I’m not the only blogger to have installed a French Revolutionary Calendar: the folks at Republikeinse have one, too (on the left-hand menubar, scroll down a bit), along with a Roman republican calendar, too. (More details on this kind of thing here.)
Careful readers will notice that their calendar and mine are a day out of sync with one another, which probably calls for explanation. The Virtual Stoa’s calendar is based on the mathematical version of the French Repbulican Calendar, which was approved but (alas) never implemented. Republikeinse probably have a script to generate dates according to the astronomical version of the calendar, which was the one actually in force in France in the 1790s, etc.
It’s good to clear that one up.
Probably.
A correspondent writes to the Virtual Stoa:
Just a tiny point about the French republican calendar: your converter is a day out at the moment (presumably it’s using a different leap year rule). Here’s the real thing.
Thanks for this: you’re right that the Calendar installed at the top of this page is a little different from the one over at the site you link to, and right to guess that it has something to do with where the leap years come in.The page that you linked to presents the astrological version of the Calendar, which was the one that the French actually used for about a decade; the Calendar on this page is based on the 1795 amendment proposed by the Montagnard Gilbert Romme (and, I think, approved but never implemented), which aimed to regularise the pattern of leap years and — crucially — to forgo the need to calculate the precise date of the equinox each year.
On this mathematical model, every fourth year was to be a leap year, except every hundredth year, which was not to be a leap year, except for every four hundredth year, which was to be a leap year; and in addition to all of this (which is, so far, along the lines of the Gregorian Calendar), a three-day correction was called for every four thousand years, and each of these four thousand-year cycles was to be known as a “franciade millaire”. And that’s where the radical improvement over the Gregorian Calendar, over the very long haul, comes in.
The bit of script which generated this calendar was originally written by my friend Steve to turn Star Trek Stardates into and out of Gregorian dates, and he did the conversion job himself to turn the code into an altogether more progressive Revolutionary Calendar Generator. I’m forever in his debt.
… and let’s get it right this year: it’s Frimaire! (See the Calendar above).
Sharp-eyed francophone reader Phersu pointed out to me in a comment attached to the post below that this month was entered in my French Republican Calendar Database as “Frigidaire”, which is a mistake now that has been cycling round for several years, and is almost certainly entirely my stupid fault. (Steve: if you read this you might want to correct your own FRCD.)
Frigidaire is not a month in the World’s Finest Calendar, but a brand of refrigerator.
And since I’m going to be spending the weekend in front of the telly, rather than in front of the computer screen, I should point out now (see above) that tomorrow is one of the most famous dates in the French Republican calendar — the 18th of Brumaire…
Happy New Year!