Calendar
The Discworld's Unnamed Continent's fictional calendar was first defined in a footnote in The Colour of Magic, and has been expanded upon in later novels and The Discworld Almanak (2004). It has numerous oddities, the chief of which is its length.
The calendar is based on a Great Year, or Astronomical Year, defined as the time it takes for the Disc to revolve once on the backs of the elephants. This lasts 800 days and contains two of each season (Midsummer occurs at a given point when the sun passes directly overhead, midwinter when it passes perpendicularly. However most people, especially farmers, consider four seasons to be a year, so an Agricultural Year of 400 days is used for most purposes.
The agricultural year is divided into 13 months:
- Ick (16 days) (the "Dead Month")
- Offle (32 days)
- February (32 days)
- March (32 days)
- April (32 days)
- May (32 days)
- June (32 days)
- Grune (32 days)
- August (32 days)
- Spune (32 days)
- Sektober (32 days)
- Ember (32 days)
- December (32 days)
Each week has eight days: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Octeday.
Read more about this topic: Discworld (world)
Famous quotes containing the word calendar:
“To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)