31 December—Everybody knows about Julius Caesar’s eponymous Julian Calendar of 46 BC that served its purpose very effectively for a millennium-and-a-half until it was superseded by Pope Gregory XIII’s even better—i.e., more accurate—eponymous Gregorian calendar that modified and replaced it in 1582, largely to correct the spacing of leap years. Amazing what people did without computers and artificial intelligence in the good old days. A lot to be said for old-fashioned human brain power.

Most of the world still uses the Gregorian calendar and Monitor readers likely will have discarded several or many of them sent by all manner of charities and businesses in the eternal pursuit of money. Evidently the superfluous calendars are worth the expense to the charities and businesses.

Now, it seems, there’s the new Republican-American calendar that also fiddles with leap years, thus superseding the Gregorian calendar, which hasn’t been around for even half a millennium. How so? you ask. Well, the “Morning 5” gutter sidebar on page 2A of today’s Waterbury rag lists five “fun facts” about the day. (The “fun” in the facts is a matter of opinion, of course. And the devolutionary functional shift of “fun” from noun to adjective is disheartening but irrelevant to this disquisition. It’s also a pedantic distraction. So it’s easier just to live with it.)

So this morning’s Republican-American asserts, “Today is the 365^th and last day of the year, otherwise known as New Year’s Eve.” Again, “Today is the 365^th and last day of the year, otherwise known as New Year’s Eve.” To remind you, the year is 2024 and 2024 is a leap year according to the Gregorian calendar.

To remind you further, a leap year has an extra day, making the last day of the year the 366^th. To remind you still further, the RA clearly states that this is that “last day of the year.” To remind you even further, a 366-day leap year is a U.S. presidential election year.

It’s inconceivable, then, that anybody at all at the Republican-American could possibly be unaware that the current year is 2024 and that a presidential election was held in it just last month and that therefore 2024 is a leap year. It’s such a given that it didn’t have to be stated in actual print. It’s also inconceivable that the vigilant and diligent copy staff of that newspaper would allow so egregious an error as understating the number of days in a year to escape correction.

The only conclusion, therefore, must be that the Republican-American’s dedicated astronomers, chronologists, and calendarists have subtly published the world’s newest calendar before the current year ends.

And let’s hope that next year is much, much better . . .