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First Date Shift Since 1927

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on December 29, 2011.

Samoa

In a perfect world, where mathematics took precedence over human quirkiness, time zones would strictly follow longitudinal lines, and align with the vernal equinoxes. Noon would occur halfway between sunrise and sunset on September 21 everywhere and that would set the time zones for the year and the world. But that is far too logical and reasonable for humans, so our time zones follow man-made national borders. There are countries that ignore the solar passage to create continuity and others that reset their clocks at sunset every day.

And then, there’s the International Date Line. It zigs through the Pacific like a, well, a drunken sailor. The dateline was established to make islands compatible with each other or with other islands controlled by the same colonial power. And tonight at midnight, the island of Samoa is moving the dateline. It’s not something that requires any international agreements, as long as the island involved is close to the dateline and independent. Samoa wants to align its dates and times with its major trading partners, Australia and New Zealand. Those countries are on the west side, where it is Friday today, and Samoa is on the east side, where it is Thursday. That’s too confusing for the Ozzies and Kiwis, so they have been “requesting” this change out of Samoa for some time.

At midnight tonight in Samoa, Friday will not happen. Samoa will go from 11:59 p.m. Thursday to 12 midnight Saturday.

It has been 84 years since a country lost a day, or several days for that matter. Starting in 1582, Christian countries slowly shifted from the Julian to Gregorian calendars, which necessitated losing days. One day it’s December 27^th and the next day is January 10^th – that kind of thing was needed to align the calendars. The process took centuries. There were 43 countries, many of which are no longer countries, that converted to the Gregorian/Christian calendar from other calendar forms. Way back in 1999, I was writing for another blog and did a piece on the millennium which basically said, guess what folks, it isn’t. Calendars are a human construct, created for human convenience, and a big pain in the butt when trying to sort out when something happened in the past, or researching genealogical postings from people who never bothered to look up the date shifts, or dealing with religious people who get in your face over the scientific terms B.C.E. and C.E.

So, Happy Saturday, Samoa! Now, can we declare 2012 almost over and just declare next Tuesday to be November 6, 2012? Please?